Hot and Sweaty
Don't get all excited by the title of this post. Stu, the babe and I went on a short camping trip this weekend. A bunch of folks were there, and the majority of them, Stuart included, biked the 35 miles from Madison to New Glarus State Park. Since Daniel's too small for a bike trailer, I drove the car with all our camping stuff. It's a hot, sticky weekend with possibly record-breaking temperatures, so I'm not sorry that: 1) I didn't bike there, and 2) we only stayed one night. Some of the more hard-core folks have been there since Friday night and will stick it out until tomorrow.
Camping with a baby is a bit of an adventure. For one thing, I was constantly worrying that he was too hot and sweaty. And then there's the whole issue of sun protection. You can't use sunscreen on infants until they're 6 months old, so I was vigilant about staying in the shade and keeping a hat on his head and light blanket over him at all times.
Our tent is tiny, one of those lightweight "2 person" deals made for backpacking, so there's no extra room, especially in terms of width. He could not have gone between us without suffocating. We ended up putting a contoured sleeping pad at the end above our heads and the baby slept in there. Of course, it was the end of the tent facing the sunrise, so when it started getting light at 5, he was awake and rarin' to go. By 5:30, I gave up trying to sleep and took him on a little walk around the dewy (re: soggy) campground.
We discovered last night that baby Daniel can kind of sit up if he's in a Daniel-sized chair:
He didn't seem to mind its pinkness. Also, notice his proud papa carrying him around.
Once we got home, we took showers (ahhhhhhhh) and went out for desperately-needed double espressos. Not only did the baby get us up at the crack of dawn (I like getting up obscenely early when I'm camping anyway), but SOMEONE was blaring music for several hours in the middle of the night, keeping all of us awake. Not good music, either, but a hodge-podge of country music, including Johnny Cash's "Cry, Cry, Cry" over and over and over and, inexplicably, the YMCA song. We wondered why the park ranger didn't do anything about it, but then one of our fellow campers said he'd gotten up in the middle of the night to investigate and discovered that the music was coming from across the highway. Someone else posited that maybe it was coming from a dairy farm, and the music was entertainment for the middle of the night milking. I tell you what, sometimes I feel like a dairy cow in the middle of the night and I don't think the YMCA song would entertain me one little bit.
Camping with a baby is a bit of an adventure. For one thing, I was constantly worrying that he was too hot and sweaty. And then there's the whole issue of sun protection. You can't use sunscreen on infants until they're 6 months old, so I was vigilant about staying in the shade and keeping a hat on his head and light blanket over him at all times.
Our tent is tiny, one of those lightweight "2 person" deals made for backpacking, so there's no extra room, especially in terms of width. He could not have gone between us without suffocating. We ended up putting a contoured sleeping pad at the end above our heads and the baby slept in there. Of course, it was the end of the tent facing the sunrise, so when it started getting light at 5, he was awake and rarin' to go. By 5:30, I gave up trying to sleep and took him on a little walk around the dewy (re: soggy) campground.
We discovered last night that baby Daniel can kind of sit up if he's in a Daniel-sized chair:
He didn't seem to mind its pinkness. Also, notice his proud papa carrying him around.
Once we got home, we took showers (ahhhhhhhh) and went out for desperately-needed double espressos. Not only did the baby get us up at the crack of dawn (I like getting up obscenely early when I'm camping anyway), but SOMEONE was blaring music for several hours in the middle of the night, keeping all of us awake. Not good music, either, but a hodge-podge of country music, including Johnny Cash's "Cry, Cry, Cry" over and over and over and, inexplicably, the YMCA song. We wondered why the park ranger didn't do anything about it, but then one of our fellow campers said he'd gotten up in the middle of the night to investigate and discovered that the music was coming from across the highway. Someone else posited that maybe it was coming from a dairy farm, and the music was entertainment for the middle of the night milking. I tell you what, sometimes I feel like a dairy cow in the middle of the night and I don't think the YMCA song would entertain me one little bit.
Comments
oh, and ann, i'm complimented that you remember my freckle! i never liked that freckle, but then, there you go and recognize it. :)
Oh, and about your Poison Ivy posts... I read today that global warming is expected to produce bigger, more allergenic poison ivy plants. Seems they did a study on it at Duke University, and the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases work as a super-accellerant to poison ivy plants. So you may want to go ahead and poison those plants growing on your property while you have the chance.