Roughing It

This past weekend, we took Chubbs on his first camping trip.  Since this was my first camping trip as a Mother With a Small Child, I searched around on the internet for some tips for camping with babies.  The results yielded two opinions on the matter: 1) It's awesome!  Just make sure you bring lots of clothes; and 2) You're crazy.

Since I already know that I'm crazy, I decided to pay more attention to the first opinion.  I followed the clothes advice and brought 2+ outfits per day for Chubbs, as well as several jackets and hats, a few blankets, and lots of bibs and burp cloths.  I also packed the car with three baby carriers - a sling, a front carrier, and a backpack (all of which were used during our trip, I might add).  For such small beings, babies need a lot of stuff.  I remembered everything we needed for Chubbs, but somehow packed myself four pairs of pants and no rain jacket.  Way to go, Brain.

My biggest curiosity was where would the baby sleep?  I am forever worrying about how warm my boys are (I have been known to cover the dog with a blanket on particularly cold camping nights.  Surprisingly, Morris doesn't like this), so naturally I wanted to make sure Chubbs had a warm and cozy sleeping arrangement.  I decided on a sleeping bag of sorts; there was no way I was buying an actual sleeping bag for an 8-month-old, so my mom sewed together the sides of a piece of fleece to make a little bag.  My plan was for Chubbs to sleep in his sleeping bag in between Chris and me in our zipped-together sleeping bags.

On our first night, I put Chubbs down for the night in his sleeping bag, and a few hours later, we joined him in the tent.  On a side note, getting ready for bed in a semi-dark tent while simultaneously trying to get the dog to lay down, attempting not to fall over, and avoiding waking the baby is no small feat.  Anyway, after we were finally in our sleeping bags with the baby in between us in his little bag, we drifted off to sleep to the sound of the creek near our tent.

I awoke two hours later to a squirmy, sweaty, hot baby.  Apparently, Chubbs is a roasty-toasty little fellow who was not terribly pleased by my attempts to wrap him in several layers of fleece.  So I took him out of his fleece bag and he slept quite comfortably between Chris and me in our sleeping bags, occasionally kicking off the portion covering him.  I was the only one who was cold.  The next two nights we removed Chubbs from his bag before going to sleep.

Chubbs loved pretty much everything about camping: waking up to the dog's nose in his face, hanging out in the tent (to a point), being outside the majority of the time, watching the trees sway in the wind, playing with sticks four times his size, eating pancakes, and being held most of the time.  The only thing he did not like?  Not having his bouncer there.  But there was no way I was packing that monstrosity in the already crammed-full car.  Besides, this way everyone got a great arm workout.

Thinking of going camping with your kiddo?  Here are my tips:

1) Bring lots of clothes

2) Bring extra wipes - camping is dirty

3) Don't wrap your kid in enough layers to keep him warm in sub-zero conditions.  Unless, of course, you are camping in sub-zero conditions, in which case I say, You're crazy.

4) Go with friends to increase the adult-to-child ratio.  This ensures that there is always someone to hold the baby when you need to pee.

5) Just go!  It's really not as hard as you think it might be.