Camping 101

At the end of June we decided to go camping as a family for the first time (in other words, with a baby). Yes, we were possibly suffering from mental delusion, and it appeared to be contagious because our good friends, the C. Family, decided to go with us.Nathan usually has Fridays off, so we spent the day packing the car and preparing to leave. We left two hours after our planned departure time, but that could be due to the fact that it started raining really hard right when we started to pack the car. We aren't the type of sane people who let something like a freakin' ton of rain stop us, so we kept right on packing, adding even more things to our list because of the weather. When the car was fully loaded Nathan observed that we were taking more with us for one night at a location less than an hour from home than we had taken for our ten-day vacation to California. (picky, picky)

We got to our campsite around 6:00 pm and left Annalee screaming in the car with the dog while Nathan and I set up the tent in the rain. It only took us 15 minutes!
Then Annalee and I sat in the dry tent while Nathan went back out into the rain to bring in all our gear and start a fire. (Good thing we'd brought dry wood with us.) Just about then our friends arrived. Mr. C. had had to work until 5, so they'd packed everything beforehand into the back of their pickup so they could just pick him up after work and go. When it started raining Mrs. C. ran out and covered the bed of the truck with a tarp. Unfortunately, the water found its way in anyway, and when they started unpacking they found that their mattress pads had neatly soaked up as much as they could hold, and everything was wet: sleeping bags, tent, pads, etc. But what troopers--they stayed anyway! We had over-packed (just a smidge) so we were able to loan them a couple of extra sleeping bags. By the time they had their tent set up it had stopped raining and we got ready for some grub. We roasted hot dogs while the potatoes baked in the coals. Mine got a little black, and Nathan was nice enough to take a picture of me separating the carbon from the frankfurter.While we cooked, the kids ran around and played. Annalee had a lot of fun with Baby C's trike. Tavi ran around with the C's dog Duncan (didn't get a pic).Tavi was a little cold because of how wet everything was and because I'd gotten him shaved as short as possible before we left so he wouldn't pick up ticks and burrs and stuff. The potatoes with their soupy topping were pretty good (once you chipped through the black stuff to the warm potato underneath) but the hit of the night was the bag of marshmallows. We all went to bed pretty early since the kids were beat but wouldn't settle down without their parents. Annalee was in her own little bed, and Nathan and I were in two sleeping bags zipped together with Tavi huddling at the bottom of the bags. Nathan was out in no time (as usual) but I laid awake for several hours listening to night noises and thinking (as usual). I must have drifted off before midnight because it was around that time that I heard a truly horrible sound: Tavi retching. He was in the bottom of the sleeping bag, right by my knee, and despite the fact that the sound had spurred me to action with a speed not of this world, I was not fast enough to get him out of my bag in time. However, I was fast enough to stick my foot right into a pile of warm vomit. Then my inhuman speed allowed me to stick my hand into said pile immediately afterward. (Perhaps I should have gone for inhuman accuracy instead of speed.) Disgusted, I turned on a lantern, ripped open the sleeping bag, pulled out the miserable dog, and wondered what in the name of Pepto Bismol I was going to do.

While Tavi shivered with cold and shame, I blundered around, willing a roll of paper towels and a canister of Chlorox wipes to magically appear. Instead, I found the bag of dirty clothes and some baby wipes. I removed my socks and used them to scoop up the offending pile. Where could I put it? In the dirty clothes bag. Then I cleaned myself and the sleeping bag up with baby wipes. I really didn't want to find any more stuff with my foot, so the sleeping bag was thrown open wide while I cleaned. Poor freezing Nathan tried to cover it back up in his sleep, so I yelled "I'M CLEANING UP DOG THROW-UP, SO KNOCK IT OFF!" Without a doubt, the meanest, harshest thing I've ever said to him. Perhaps he thought it all a nightmare, because he didn't react except to stop struggling and go back to sleep. Meanwhile, wishing that it really was a nightmare, and feeling guilty for being so mean to my husband, I finished cleaning things up, covered the wet area with an extra baby blanket, and tried to calm down. I not only felt guilty about Nathan, I also felt bad for my poor sick puppy. I was sure that it was my fault he was sick, since I had shaved him and then made him stay out in the cold and wet all day and evening. He was still shivering, so I wrapped him in another extra baby blanket (I TOLD you we overpacked, but it turned out to be a good thing! Ha!) and cuddled him to my chest, outside the sleeping bag. Turned out it was a good thing he was outside the bag, because before too much longer he started gagging again. This time, though, he got up and barfed on the other side of the tent. I turned the light back on, used some more baby wipes, and threw everything in the dirty clothes bag once again. (I was going to have to remember to warn Nathan about opening that bag in the morning.) He did that two more times, and then Annalee woke up. I tried to get her to go back to sleep. She woke up several more times, and finally I woke Nathan up and asked him to take care of her. He tried to calm her down, but she was having none of it. In desperation I offered to nurse her, even though we are way past morning nursings (yes, it was morning by now). In the middle of that attempt, Tavi barfed again. "Could you take care of that, Nathan?"

My dear, sweet husband (who hates the cold and getting up early) got out of his bag and cleaned up the mess as I told him how I'd done it. Then he climbed back into the sleeping bag and stuck his foot in . . .

Yes. It is true. Ironic, but true.

It seems that before Tavi had thrown up on my side, he had thrown up on Nathan's side without waking us up. Naturally, not wanting to sleep in the mess, he then came over to snuggle with me.

We discovered that the only thing worse than warm vomit is cold vomit.

Nathan jumped out of the bag, muttering his Mormon curses and hopping around in revulsion. He was so busy ranting that he (luckily) didn't hear me laughing my head off. (Come on, can you blame me? I knew exactly how disgusting it was, and I'd had almost no sleep. I was the only one qualified to laugh!) He changed his socks, pulled on his shoes and jacket, and announced "I can't go back to sleep in that. I'm getting up." So he stomped out of the tent to light the fire, leaving the mess. It was 5:30 a.m.

Annalee settled down to sleep, so I managed to doze for another hour until she declared that it was time for her to get up. (She usually gets up at 9:30.) I threw her shoes and jacket on her and pushed her out the door. "Here, Nathan!" Then went back to sleep. I was wending my way through quiet dreamland, unaware that Tavi had crept back into the sleeping bag, when suddenly he barfed again, ON MY KNEE! That was it for me. I left the mess in the bag, changed my clothes (it had soaked through everything) and stumbled out to the dying fire. "Where is the rest of the wood?" I asked. "That's the last of it," Nathan said, pointing at the smoldering embers. Consequence of being the last one up. Uncharacteristically, Tavi didn't follow me out, but stayed curled up under a blanket in the tent. Since I was up now, Nathan went back in the tent to change Annalee's diaper. "Did you pack more wipes than this?" he asked, staring at the 5 limp wipes lying in the bottom of the box.

"No."

My answer was crisp, short, and loaded with landmines that must have set off Nathan's witchy-wife alarm, because he didn't press it.

The C Family soon joined us and we toasted bagels over the coals. Just as the fire was sputtering out the sun finally emerged and warmed us up considerably. We decided to set off on our planned hike at once so it wouldn't be too hot. We coaxed Tavi out of the tent, and he seemed to do a little better once he was warmed by the sun. However, he just walked, ignoring his friend scampering around and begging him to play like they had the day before. We hiked through some beeeeeautiful country, for just over a mile, and then the kids got tired and we came back. Annalee fell asleep on Nathan's back.
We packed up as soon as we'd gotten back to camp, and ate our lunch in the car on the way home. We pulled in the driveway and dumped everything from the car into the garage, planning to deal with it later. (One throw-up bag is still in the garage. Are you going to clean it up?) Annalee went down for a nap, we all took showers, and Tavi was sick some more for the next two days.

In the end, we were still glad we'd gone. A friend of mine recently voiced my exact feelings: when bad things happen during my day, I keep cool and get through it by composing my blog post in my head. All frustrating occurances make great stories later! We were glad we'd gotten to spend time with the C family, and we'd learned a few things. Annalee learned that getting up at 6:30 is not a good idea. Nathan swore that we would never be taking Tavi camping again. I learned that camping and sleeping are mutually exclusive. And Tavi almost learned the right place to throw up.