1) Owen getting better at crawling. A few days ago J set him down in the living room surrounded by some favorite toys so she could finish James' bath. A few moments later, a little blonde head peeked its way around the door...
No place is safe anymore. He routinely crawls over to the radiator vents and disassembles them. He climbs on and off the mattresses on the floor, and is especially interested in any books, shoes, or power cords that might be lying at infant level.
2) James' room is a baseball stadium. He runs the bases. (Making an L shape around the bed and frequently hopping over the younger brother who's crawled in to see what he's doing) and keeps up a constant stream of color commentary. George is most often the other player, although he's also sung the Take Me Out to the Ballgame tune using only the word Owen.
3) Throwing rocks in the stream. This is sort of the meaning of life for a little boy as it involves all five of the major elemental forces of little-boy-hood. (1-Throwing things 2-Getting dirty 3-Causing big noises/crashes 4-Climbing 5-Getting soaked). Today I only took James, but a few days ago Owen came along as well. He thought it was great fun, but for every rock he actually threw in the stream he tried to put two in his mouth.
4) Pearce sing-time. James has declared that Owen's room is "Pearce." He goes in, stands on the bedframe, sets up George and Steven, and then sings Sunday School songs to them. This would be really cute just on its own, but you have to know that for months and months James has resisted participating in the sing-time when he's in the church nursery. Some sweet woman comes in every week and sings to all of the little 3 year olds in the nursery, and J tells me that inevitably when she walks by there's a group of kids sitting at her feet and singing the songs enthusiastically while James stands off in a corner alone playing with George and Steven. She took to asking him whether he was singing along with the Sunday School songs or not, and James always made a point of proudly telling her that she refused. In fact, he even began to answer the question before it was asked. (She would pick him up at the nursery and he'd declare as soon as he saw her "Hi Mommy! I didn't sing today!") I don't know what clicked when we arrived at camp, but he suddenly decided that he was going to set up his own "Pearce" and has faithfully held singing sessions for George and Steven (none of the rest of us are allowed in) where he sings close to a dozen different Sunday School songs, all memorized, some of which we've never heard before.
5) James' crush on Lizzie. Lizzie is nine, and is still a little too young to be at camp. Her family started sitting with us during mealtimes, and she condescended to play with him. Now he constantly asks about her. "Hey, when we go to the music building will we see Wizzie?" "Hey, is Wizzie going to be at wunch?" "Where does Wizzie wive? Does she wive at 3-0-6? Can we say hi to her?" "Mommy, what do you think Wizzie is doing?" If you ask him about her or about what he thinks about her, he'll either run into his room and hide or he'll lie down on the floor and bury his face in George and Steven. And then, if he sees her on campus, he'll just about walk into traffic with distraction. This afternoon she was crossing into the cafeteria with her parents and James whispered "Hey Daddy, who do you see?" "I think I see someone we know...who is it?" "Can you tell me?" "You know who it is...who is it?" "Can you tell me?"
6) James' room is also a tractor store. There are tractors for sale, and the tractor is displayed up on a kitchen stool. Owen isn't allowed to play with the tractor, but he can come and visit the tractor store. Do you want to buy a tractor?
7) Owen's social graces. We love camp, and we love the people at camp. It's always a mix of some people we know fairly well and some people who we don't know, but suspect we'd probably get along with nicely if we sat down and had a conversation. But even with the people we know fairly well, conversation for J and me is always a deliberate effort. We weigh our words, we speak carefully, and we're socially self-conscious. We want to connect and make new friends, but the inner voice of our introverted selves would be fine to just keep to our own business and read quietly in the flats all afternoon. Not so with Owen. He smiles at anybody and everyone who passes by him, often smeared in cafeteria food and brandishing whatever utensil was carelessly left within his wingspan. All the little girl campers stop by and giggle at him, and he delights them each time with a goofy grin in return, completely happy to be the center of their attention.
8) James' room is also a recycling truck. Since the water here is so nasty we always bring an enormous pack of bottled water to keep in the fridge. By several days in we'd already nearly filled up the recycling bin in our room with empty water bottles. Yesterday I walked by the bin and noticed it was empty. J said she hadn't taken in out. James, sitting on his bed, declared that he was driving a recycling truck with George. I later found every single empty water bottle in the underwear drawer of his dresser. In fact, I think he's started to ask for new water in his cup just so he can have another empty bottle to put "on his recycling truck."
9) Visits from friends. Pax, K, and Abby stopped by yesterday afternoon, and we got to see a personal demonstration of Abby's new skills. While they were visiting the Shewans also dropped in, and we had a lovely (albeit very warm) time catching up in our apartment. In fact, since we've been down at camp I've seen everyone in the family except Sam. I don't remember the last time we did that much visiting in one week.
10) Ice cream at every meal.
Showing posts with label Camping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Camping. Show all posts
Monday, July 27, 2015
Monday, July 20, 2015
Boys at Camp
Owen has become a grabber.
This afternoon when I brought him out from his nap I had set up shop on the kitchen counter in front of a big box fan overlooking the back field behind the flats. I brought him over to where I'd stacked my books and papers, hoping to finish the last few lines I had in my chapter before I changed him and got down to play.
He immediately started grabbing for the book. I held the book further away, but this made it hard to hold him and the book, so I leaned up against the counter. He grabbed the wireless mouse to the computer and threw it down on the ground. One of the plastic covers broke off and skidded across the floor. As I reached down to grab the mouse, he grabbed a pen on the counter, and through that on the floor. So I reached down to grab the pen after I'd put the mouse back up on the counter, and on the way down he grabbed the power cord to the laptop and tried to put it in his mouth. I took the power cord away, and went to retrieve the missing plastic piece to the mouse. He knocked down two of James' hot wheels cars as I was leaning past that section of counter, and I shifted him into my other hand. When I stood up again he was holding one set of index cards in one hand and he had my phone in his mouth with the other.
There's lots to explore as an eight-month old.
Especially now that we're at camp!
We're here (mostly) for the next two weeks and my only responsibilities (mostly) are to watch the boys and practice, so that should be favorable news to those of you who like reading blogs. Our apartment (or, capartment, as James calls it) is sweltering hot, as usual, but the people are lovely and the campus is beautiful.
So far James has taken the task of teaching Owen about camp life very seriously. "Owen, this is a big rock. And it used to be purple, but now it is sparkly. And Owen, these are swings. You've never seen swings before, but I'm gonna swing on the swings with George and then we're gonna go frow rocks in the water."
There's ice cream available at every meal, and that's a nice little bargaining chip. More importantly, we don't have to do the cleanup or the preparation for any of the meals.
Today we puttered around the flats in the morning, then took a long walk over to the stream for rock-throwing. James found a huge spider under one of the rocks he picked up, and he's been very careful to examine each rock thoroughly before picking it up and throwing it ever since. Owen sat in the stroller for most of the morning and only occasionally lurched forward in an attempt to break his bonds.
Since we don't want to attempt sleeping the boys together, J and I have set up our mattresses in the middle of our big "living room." This makes for a big bounce pad, and James and Owen spent most of the hour before their naps laughing at each other jumping and falling off the mattresses.
One of these nights we'll let them stay up for singtime, but tonight they were both tuckered out from lots of exploring and in need of baths.
And it isn't even too hot here in the flats, as I sit beside a big stack of books and scratch off bits of reading I was hoping to do. Plus, it's a lot easier now that Owen isn't trying to eat my book.
This afternoon when I brought him out from his nap I had set up shop on the kitchen counter in front of a big box fan overlooking the back field behind the flats. I brought him over to where I'd stacked my books and papers, hoping to finish the last few lines I had in my chapter before I changed him and got down to play.
He immediately started grabbing for the book. I held the book further away, but this made it hard to hold him and the book, so I leaned up against the counter. He grabbed the wireless mouse to the computer and threw it down on the ground. One of the plastic covers broke off and skidded across the floor. As I reached down to grab the mouse, he grabbed a pen on the counter, and through that on the floor. So I reached down to grab the pen after I'd put the mouse back up on the counter, and on the way down he grabbed the power cord to the laptop and tried to put it in his mouth. I took the power cord away, and went to retrieve the missing plastic piece to the mouse. He knocked down two of James' hot wheels cars as I was leaning past that section of counter, and I shifted him into my other hand. When I stood up again he was holding one set of index cards in one hand and he had my phone in his mouth with the other.
There's lots to explore as an eight-month old.
Especially now that we're at camp!
We're here (mostly) for the next two weeks and my only responsibilities (mostly) are to watch the boys and practice, so that should be favorable news to those of you who like reading blogs. Our apartment (or, capartment, as James calls it) is sweltering hot, as usual, but the people are lovely and the campus is beautiful.
So far James has taken the task of teaching Owen about camp life very seriously. "Owen, this is a big rock. And it used to be purple, but now it is sparkly. And Owen, these are swings. You've never seen swings before, but I'm gonna swing on the swings with George and then we're gonna go frow rocks in the water."
There's ice cream available at every meal, and that's a nice little bargaining chip. More importantly, we don't have to do the cleanup or the preparation for any of the meals.
Today we puttered around the flats in the morning, then took a long walk over to the stream for rock-throwing. James found a huge spider under one of the rocks he picked up, and he's been very careful to examine each rock thoroughly before picking it up and throwing it ever since. Owen sat in the stroller for most of the morning and only occasionally lurched forward in an attempt to break his bonds.
Since we don't want to attempt sleeping the boys together, J and I have set up our mattresses in the middle of our big "living room." This makes for a big bounce pad, and James and Owen spent most of the hour before their naps laughing at each other jumping and falling off the mattresses.
One of these nights we'll let them stay up for singtime, but tonight they were both tuckered out from lots of exploring and in need of baths.
And it isn't even too hot here in the flats, as I sit beside a big stack of books and scratch off bits of reading I was hoping to do. Plus, it's a lot easier now that Owen isn't trying to eat my book.
Friday, June 19, 2015
How the Campout Went
It was actually quite successful. Perhaps acknowledging that up front takes away all the drama from the blog, but I didn't really have anything to complain about.
About 7:00 I went outside and had a fire with James and Grandma Davis, who is visiting for the week. We made s'mores, James dripped his all over his chair and pants, and then we started bringing out all the necessary provisions. I attempted to set up the tent, which went reasonably well. Safety is always a big concern among the Outdoor Goods community, so the manufacturers of our tent were kind enough to make it virtually assembly-proof, which keeps us very safe from being harmed while inside it. On a related note, Calvus pointed out to me that I should never have any trouble remembering the Hebrew word for tent. ('Ohel.)
We did get the tent set up and tarped, and then Grandma Davis pointed out when I returned from taking care of something indoors that it had nearly flown away several times in the wind. I improvised some tent stakes from sticks in the firebox, then brought out the final load of supplies for a night of roughing it outdoors: one child sized sleeping bag, one child-sized pillow, one Curious George book, one illustrated Bible story, Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car, a lantern, two adult sized blankets, a water bottle, a tumbler of scotch on the rocks, the Greek New Testament, Ovid's Metamorphoses, H.W. Joseph's Introduction to Logic, the Oxford Book of Latin Verse, Dickens' Master Humphrey's Clock, the Cambridge Companion to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, headphones, an iPhone 6, Hebrew vocabulary flashcards, three pens, two pencils, a yellow highlighter, and two blank notebooks. And George and Steven. You know, only the necessities.
If you couldn't tell, I was really hoping to get some reading done.
It didn't exactly work out. James and I had a lovely time reading his books aloud while he waited for it to get dark enough outside to justify turning the lantern on. At one point J arrived back home and came out to say goodnight, and when I saw that it was nearly 9:00 I told him that it was time to say prayers and go to bed.
"Are you going to bed too, Daddy?"
"I think I'm going to stay up and read some of my books for a bit."
"I want you to go to bed too."
"Tell you what, do you want to stay up a little longer and look at the pictures in your books while I read my books?"
"Can I turn the lantern on?"
"Yes, that's fine."
"Daddy, can you tell me what the words say?"
"James, you have that book memorized. You know exactly what the words say."
"Can you tell them to me?"
"Daddy, I wanna go to sleep."
"Okay, do you want me to turn the lantern off?"
"No, I wanna keep the lantern on."
"Okay, sleep well little bear."
"I want you to sleep too."
<moment of resigning ambitions of staying up late reading by lamplight>
"Okay, I'll go to sleep too. Do you want me to sleep next to you?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, night night James. Do you have enough room?"
"No."
"How about now?"
"I need you to move a little bit more further."
"How about this?"
"I need you to move a little bit more further."
"James, I'm all the way on the other side of the tent now."
"I want to sleep next to my books. Can you put them on my pillow?"
"Okay. But I'm going to turn out the lantern now."
"I still need to hold it."
We both woke up briefly after midnight when it sprinkled on the roof of the tent for a few minutes, and I went in to use the bathroom around 3 AM. He didn't stir when I opened or closed the tent, and I didn't hear anything else from him until 5:30 AM when it began to get light out and he woke up. That was the coldest it had been all night, but he wanted to read each of his books one more time before we went inside.
He was too scared of Grandma Davis sleeping on the couch downstairs to admit he needed to use the bathroom, so it wasn't until he had already eaten a donut and I was halfway through frying up some bacon that he told me he needed to go pee-pee RIGHT NOW. I ran him upstairs as quietly as possible, sat him on the potty, then snuck back down to take the bacon off the burner. It didn't get too badly burned. I made a delicious breakfast between the meat, some fried eggs, and some sliced mushrooms that I sauteed in the bacon drippings with freshly squeezed lemon juice. He turned his nose up at all of it and generally behaved like a child who'd lost three and a half hours off of his normal sleep schedule.
He just went down for a nap after doing reasonably well for the rest of the morning. He wants to know when we can go out and sleep in the tent again.
About 7:00 I went outside and had a fire with James and Grandma Davis, who is visiting for the week. We made s'mores, James dripped his all over his chair and pants, and then we started bringing out all the necessary provisions. I attempted to set up the tent, which went reasonably well. Safety is always a big concern among the Outdoor Goods community, so the manufacturers of our tent were kind enough to make it virtually assembly-proof, which keeps us very safe from being harmed while inside it. On a related note, Calvus pointed out to me that I should never have any trouble remembering the Hebrew word for tent. ('Ohel.)
We did get the tent set up and tarped, and then Grandma Davis pointed out when I returned from taking care of something indoors that it had nearly flown away several times in the wind. I improvised some tent stakes from sticks in the firebox, then brought out the final load of supplies for a night of roughing it outdoors: one child sized sleeping bag, one child-sized pillow, one Curious George book, one illustrated Bible story, Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car, a lantern, two adult sized blankets, a water bottle, a tumbler of scotch on the rocks, the Greek New Testament, Ovid's Metamorphoses, H.W. Joseph's Introduction to Logic, the Oxford Book of Latin Verse, Dickens' Master Humphrey's Clock, the Cambridge Companion to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, headphones, an iPhone 6, Hebrew vocabulary flashcards, three pens, two pencils, a yellow highlighter, and two blank notebooks. And George and Steven. You know, only the necessities.
If you couldn't tell, I was really hoping to get some reading done.
It didn't exactly work out. James and I had a lovely time reading his books aloud while he waited for it to get dark enough outside to justify turning the lantern on. At one point J arrived back home and came out to say goodnight, and when I saw that it was nearly 9:00 I told him that it was time to say prayers and go to bed.
"Are you going to bed too, Daddy?"
"I think I'm going to stay up and read some of my books for a bit."
"I want you to go to bed too."
"Tell you what, do you want to stay up a little longer and look at the pictures in your books while I read my books?"
"Can I turn the lantern on?"
"Yes, that's fine."
"Daddy, can you tell me what the words say?"
"James, you have that book memorized. You know exactly what the words say."
"Can you tell them to me?"
"Daddy, I wanna go to sleep."
"Okay, do you want me to turn the lantern off?"
"No, I wanna keep the lantern on."
"Okay, sleep well little bear."
"I want you to sleep too."
<moment of resigning ambitions of staying up late reading by lamplight>
"Okay, I'll go to sleep too. Do you want me to sleep next to you?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, night night James. Do you have enough room?"
"No."
"How about now?"
"I need you to move a little bit more further."
"How about this?"
"I need you to move a little bit more further."
"James, I'm all the way on the other side of the tent now."
"I want to sleep next to my books. Can you put them on my pillow?"
"Okay. But I'm going to turn out the lantern now."
"I still need to hold it."
We both woke up briefly after midnight when it sprinkled on the roof of the tent for a few minutes, and I went in to use the bathroom around 3 AM. He didn't stir when I opened or closed the tent, and I didn't hear anything else from him until 5:30 AM when it began to get light out and he woke up. That was the coldest it had been all night, but he wanted to read each of his books one more time before we went inside.
He was too scared of Grandma Davis sleeping on the couch downstairs to admit he needed to use the bathroom, so it wasn't until he had already eaten a donut and I was halfway through frying up some bacon that he told me he needed to go pee-pee RIGHT NOW. I ran him upstairs as quietly as possible, sat him on the potty, then snuck back down to take the bacon off the burner. It didn't get too badly burned. I made a delicious breakfast between the meat, some fried eggs, and some sliced mushrooms that I sauteed in the bacon drippings with freshly squeezed lemon juice. He turned his nose up at all of it and generally behaved like a child who'd lost three and a half hours off of his normal sleep schedule.
He just went down for a nap after doing reasonably well for the rest of the morning. He wants to know when we can go out and sleep in the tent again.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
The Tent
The tent is up today, much to James' delight. When we put it up two days ago he was cautious and cranky-looking. I'd arrived home from work about an hour earlier carrying a bag full of hot dogs, buns, s'more materials, and then the tent bag. The tent had lain forgotten in our storage unit for months, packed away in an inaccessible cranny as the solution to the problem of "what can I throw back in this unreachable hole that I know we aren't likely to need for the entire time our residence in Brighton?" The tent was buried before that under mounds of boxes in the laundry room in Spencerport, and in the basement at St. Vivian's before that.
The tent was originally a gift from the former head of the Roberts music department. A decidedly single and pessimistic woman, she'd given it to us on our wedding day so that "we'd at least never be completely homeless." It was quite touching that she came, actually, although the seven hour trip to our wedding and back again has become a legendary tale of patience to the friend of ours who shared her car. Her left-handed blessing has been a reminder from time to time of just how good we have it. Going on seven years married we've always had jobs, and we're going on our fourth year now of making a comfortable living doing nothing except performing and teaching. Today has been a day when I've been a little blue about practicing and paying bills and taking auditions, and it's good to have a visible reminder in the living room that we've actually done a pretty good job of music as a career, at least so far.
REAL LIFE UPDATE:
I was writing this blog in the living room when I heard James bounce up from his nap and pitter-patter into the living room, asking through the binky in his mouth to "read oo-ah." He's been told several times today that the age of the binky is now drawn to an end, and this will be his first night sleeping without it. When I told him that we could read oo-ah when gave me the binky, he retreated back to his room and got into his bed again. That was 30 minutes ago. He's been sitting back there the entire time, looking straight ahead, sucking on that binky. I tried to lure him out with animal crackers at one point, but he just said "No, ginky." Maybe he thinks that if he stays in his bed until 7:30 he'll just be able to keep it for another night. It wouldn't be his first use of this tactic, as will be discussed below.
Anyhow, J remembers that we set up the tent once in North Carolina, but I have no memory of this. My first memory of the tent is the summer that we lived with my parents. (Yes, we are very successful musicians.) We took the tent back to Grandpa's pond and camped out with Lux, Calvus, and Martha. Most of my childhood camping experiences were with Pax, and they never really involved setting up a tent. We would just drag out a tarp and two sleeping bags, and if it rained (and it always did rain) we would wake up in a start and go flying back to the house, sometimes remembering to bring the sleeping bags. Those were glorious summer nights, with a dark country sky full of bright stars and early mornings with the smell of dewy grass. Also, we would argue a lot.
Arguing was theme for our camping experience at Grandpa's pond. We swore by the end that our tent, which is supposed to be a two-person tent, couldn't be set up without at least three people. Lux ended up being the unlucky third, and I'm afraid we might have scared him out of ever getting married. When we laughed about it later with Mom, she said that painting a room together is the other true test of marriage, which we still haven't attempted.
We couldn't make heads or tails of the instructions, but by trial and error and a certain amount of luck we managed to get the tent erected. We had a lovely campfire that night, put out lanterns, sang songs, and went for some early morning fishing in the canoe. And that was the entire usage of our tent up until this week.
I try to have interesting dates for us every Tuesday evening, and this week it was the camping theme. When J opened the door for me and saw the tent, she exclaimed "Cool, what a great idea!" And the night just got better from there. We woke James up to watch, and the whole process went smoothly. As noted above, he was a little wary of the big canvas on the living room floor at first, and we didn't know what he was thinking when we started to lift up the tent poles. As soon as they went into the air, he took off running for his bedroom and I figured that he was scared again. A minute later he came back carrying all the stuffed animals he could imagine, which he promptly deposited inside the tent before going back for a load of trains and cars.
He played in there all afternoon, fiddled with the lantern, and did constant laps in and out through the entrance. (He made J zip it almost all the way down so that he'd have to crawl through a small hole.) We took a brief break to make dinner, which was roasted andouille sausages (James, these are like hot dogs but way better) sweet potato fries and roasted brussel sprouts. When I got back from a church meeting, we did s'mores in the microwave, and when we put him to sleep in his bed he was completely exhausted from the fun of it all.
J and I slept in the tent on top of our old futon mattress, and while it wasn't quite like waking up to the smell of the dew, we did both sleep very deeply. I had rehearsal the next morning, and received periodic updates about what they were doing together. (Having breakfast in the tent, reading books in the tent, playing iPad in the tent, practicing running in and out of the tent.)
J had to take the tent down to teach a lesson in the afternoon, and James staged his first lie-in protest. He gathered all his animals, spread-eagled on the mattress, and wouldn't move until he was promised that we'd put the tent up again later. We did that night, and it went up in just a few minutes. J remarked that we'd made a lot of progress in our marriage. It was a shame Lux wasn't there to see it.
And now, I need to take the tent down for good. And I need to take the binky away for good. I put some pizza dough in the bread machine for dinner (stay tuned for a follow-up blog entry if that goes as well as it usually does) and I have a student coming in a few hours. James has been awake now for an hour, and all good things must come to an end. But don't worry...if he still doesn't want animal crackers I may offer him a s'more.
The tent was originally a gift from the former head of the Roberts music department. A decidedly single and pessimistic woman, she'd given it to us on our wedding day so that "we'd at least never be completely homeless." It was quite touching that she came, actually, although the seven hour trip to our wedding and back again has become a legendary tale of patience to the friend of ours who shared her car. Her left-handed blessing has been a reminder from time to time of just how good we have it. Going on seven years married we've always had jobs, and we're going on our fourth year now of making a comfortable living doing nothing except performing and teaching. Today has been a day when I've been a little blue about practicing and paying bills and taking auditions, and it's good to have a visible reminder in the living room that we've actually done a pretty good job of music as a career, at least so far.
REAL LIFE UPDATE:
I was writing this blog in the living room when I heard James bounce up from his nap and pitter-patter into the living room, asking through the binky in his mouth to "read oo-ah." He's been told several times today that the age of the binky is now drawn to an end, and this will be his first night sleeping without it. When I told him that we could read oo-ah when gave me the binky, he retreated back to his room and got into his bed again. That was 30 minutes ago. He's been sitting back there the entire time, looking straight ahead, sucking on that binky. I tried to lure him out with animal crackers at one point, but he just said "No, ginky." Maybe he thinks that if he stays in his bed until 7:30 he'll just be able to keep it for another night. It wouldn't be his first use of this tactic, as will be discussed below.
Anyhow, J remembers that we set up the tent once in North Carolina, but I have no memory of this. My first memory of the tent is the summer that we lived with my parents. (Yes, we are very successful musicians.) We took the tent back to Grandpa's pond and camped out with Lux, Calvus, and Martha. Most of my childhood camping experiences were with Pax, and they never really involved setting up a tent. We would just drag out a tarp and two sleeping bags, and if it rained (and it always did rain) we would wake up in a start and go flying back to the house, sometimes remembering to bring the sleeping bags. Those were glorious summer nights, with a dark country sky full of bright stars and early mornings with the smell of dewy grass. Also, we would argue a lot.
Arguing was theme for our camping experience at Grandpa's pond. We swore by the end that our tent, which is supposed to be a two-person tent, couldn't be set up without at least three people. Lux ended up being the unlucky third, and I'm afraid we might have scared him out of ever getting married. When we laughed about it later with Mom, she said that painting a room together is the other true test of marriage, which we still haven't attempted.
We couldn't make heads or tails of the instructions, but by trial and error and a certain amount of luck we managed to get the tent erected. We had a lovely campfire that night, put out lanterns, sang songs, and went for some early morning fishing in the canoe. And that was the entire usage of our tent up until this week.
I try to have interesting dates for us every Tuesday evening, and this week it was the camping theme. When J opened the door for me and saw the tent, she exclaimed "Cool, what a great idea!" And the night just got better from there. We woke James up to watch, and the whole process went smoothly. As noted above, he was a little wary of the big canvas on the living room floor at first, and we didn't know what he was thinking when we started to lift up the tent poles. As soon as they went into the air, he took off running for his bedroom and I figured that he was scared again. A minute later he came back carrying all the stuffed animals he could imagine, which he promptly deposited inside the tent before going back for a load of trains and cars.
He played in there all afternoon, fiddled with the lantern, and did constant laps in and out through the entrance. (He made J zip it almost all the way down so that he'd have to crawl through a small hole.) We took a brief break to make dinner, which was roasted andouille sausages (James, these are like hot dogs but way better) sweet potato fries and roasted brussel sprouts. When I got back from a church meeting, we did s'mores in the microwave, and when we put him to sleep in his bed he was completely exhausted from the fun of it all.
J and I slept in the tent on top of our old futon mattress, and while it wasn't quite like waking up to the smell of the dew, we did both sleep very deeply. I had rehearsal the next morning, and received periodic updates about what they were doing together. (Having breakfast in the tent, reading books in the tent, playing iPad in the tent, practicing running in and out of the tent.)
J had to take the tent down to teach a lesson in the afternoon, and James staged his first lie-in protest. He gathered all his animals, spread-eagled on the mattress, and wouldn't move until he was promised that we'd put the tent up again later. We did that night, and it went up in just a few minutes. J remarked that we'd made a lot of progress in our marriage. It was a shame Lux wasn't there to see it.
And now, I need to take the tent down for good. And I need to take the binky away for good. I put some pizza dough in the bread machine for dinner (stay tuned for a follow-up blog entry if that goes as well as it usually does) and I have a student coming in a few hours. James has been awake now for an hour, and all good things must come to an end. But don't worry...if he still doesn't want animal crackers I may offer him a s'more.
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