Home Away From Home

On our drive out to Cape Cod last Wednesday, we plugged Luke and Jaz into the portable dvd player (which we bought in March in anticipation of our 28 hours of travel to and from New Mexico), played some music until Zeb fell asleep (it took about five minutes), and then popped in the first cd of David Sedaris' new book, "When You Are Engulfed In Flames." We love listening to David Sedaris. Especially on long car rides.

There was one timely quote that made us both laugh out loud. Sedaris is recounting some hilarious stories about a woman, Helen, who lived in his old apartment building and was always giving him unsolicited advice. She has just warned him that if he works on New Year's Day, he'll work every day of the year.

"I wondered for a moment if she was right, and then I considered the last little truism she had passed my way: you won't get a hangover if you sleep with the TV on. She also claimed you could prevent crib death by making the sign of the cross three times with a steak knife.
"If you're camping, could you use a Swiss Army knife instead?" I asked.
She looked at me and shook her head. 'Who the **** goes camping with a baby?'"

This little camping trip was our third time camping with Zeben. The first time he was about 6 months old, the second time he was 9 months old, and now he is 19 months old. And truthfully, he's the easy one to take camping since his food (he's still mostly breastfed) comes with us wherever we go. Really, as long as the weather is good (which we made sure of this time), camping with our three kids isn't very difficult at all. We make sure to bring a lot of stuff with us. Our minivan was packed (someday we'll go camping by bakfiets, but not this time).

Lena went out and got a 100-quart cooler just before we left, and it made all the difference in the world (we had never tried to bring perishable food with us before). We filled it with cut-up fruit, veggies, yogurt, cheese, and deli meat, and it was enough to feed the kids the whole time we were gone. We called it our "fridge away from fridge." We brought so many clothes and towels that there was no worry about anything getting wet or dirty. We brought pillows, and sleeping pads, and sleeping bags, and blankets in attempt to recreate our Family Nest in the tent.

When we got to the campground, we drove around and picked the most private of all the available campsites. We put up a shield of towels on the clothesline for extra privacy (when we first set up our tent, there was a very young, childless couple staying on the campsite adjacent to ours, and I did feel a little bit bad for them that we were crashing their romantic getaway. They left the morning after we arrived). We ended up with a very sweet and cozy home base.

The tent version of the family bed:

We put Zeben to sleep in the stroller at night, and then brought him into the tent when we went to bed. This is pretty much exactly what we do at home (at home he falls asleep on our backs, but it was too buggy at night to do that on the campground).


We kept all of the necessities (food, clothes, diapers, etc.) in the car so that we'd have them wherever we went. We stayed at the beach right up until bed time, got the kids ready for bed (teeth brushed and in pajamas) in the car, and then drove back to the campsite just in time for them to crawl into the tent and go to sleep.

Waking up in the morning in our home away from home was almost exactly the same experience as waking up in our real bed.

The one key difference is that the campground has pretty strict "quiet hours" from 10:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. In the absence of a clock (and in the presence of lots of early morning sun), our kids woke up around 6:15 every morning in the tent. So there was lots of "shhhh, quiet voices, remember" as we quickly got them all into the car and headed back to the beach for breakfast.

I admit to fantasizing that we had a Harry Potter style magical tent (the kind that looks like a regular tent on the outside, but on the inside, it's like a huge cottage), or maybe even just a real life "condo-sized" tent, but the fact is that our simple one-room tent works just fine for us. So, who the **** goes camping with a baby? We do, and quite happily.