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.

Comments

Tooz said…
I understand about the little tents. We went camping with our two eldest children when they were four and two, respectively, in a similar tent. All night long we had to deal with condensation from a whole family of mouthbreathers raining down on us. What a mess!
ann said…
susan, is it odd that i recognize your shins in the picture of stephanie's socks? i looked at that picture and thought, "oh, susan and stephanie must have the same size feet, and so she tried them on to make sure they'd fit stephanie." then I thought, "how did I know those were susan's feet?" but, at one time, my whole world revolved around our friendship, so i remember that freckle. i'd take it as a compliment. and your husband seems wonderful. mine is. :-)
canadahauntsme said…
Hmm... annoying sounds at wee early hours of the morning? Can someone say "whipporrrrrrrrrwill! whipporrrrrrrrrrrrwill!?"
Suze said…
it's better than WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh, which is what i'm hearing right now. last night he didn't get enough sleep, so it's hell to pay now. we're trying to put him to bed an hour early and it is NOT going well. ugh.

oh, and ann, i'm complimented that you remember my freckle! i never liked that freckle, but then, there you go and recognize it. :)
Walking the floor with a kind of bouncy, shuffle-step while saying "Shhhh, shhhh, shhhh" over and over (and over and over) again worked for Jamethan when he was little and WOULD NOT go to sleep.

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.
Pam said…
Love the picture!!! Keep 'em coming!!

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