A mother of boys

I had an awesome weekend. It started Thursday night — we took Friday off. We stayed up late late late making lists and going shopping and packing stuff into the car for our first camping trip with the boys.

I love camping. I’ve loved camping for as long as I remember. I love exploring, and the fire. I love the sound of a zipper in the morning. I love pine needles in my breakfast and clear morning sunlight on the mountains. However, here in New England I haven’t known WHERE to go camping, we haven’t had all the gear we needed out here, and since Grey was born I’ve been too chicken to bring him out. Life is too short to not do things you love because you’re chicken, so I put a trip on the calendar this spring.

We went to White Lake State Park in New Hampshire. It was an excellent combination of facilities (nice bathrooms, a playground, a great beach with a lifeguard, an onsite canteen, etc).

On Friday morning, when the boys woke up at 6 am, we shoveled ourselves into the car and headed North. It was a beautiful drive, on one of the first warm days of the summer. We stopped at the Miss Wakefield Diner for second breakfasts, and were still at the campground by like 10 am.

We had a ball. I’d bought a new tent, which turned out to be absolutely enormous. It was more than big enough for a Pack-and-play, two grownups, and a cuddly three year old. The lake was really quite warm for this early in the spring. Grey had a wonderful time swimming. I got floaters for both boys, and Thane seemed to really enjoy swimming too. After we were done with water play, there was sand to be dug into. Naps didn’t really happen, sadly, so our nature walk around the lake was a little more contentious than I’d have hoped. (Grey was tired. Adam and I were TIRED. Thane was sleeping on my back.)

That night we had a great campfire (bragging alert: I got the fire started with one piece of newspaper, with the same match I used to light the mosquito lantern). We roasted hot dogs and made s’mores. We sat and stared at the coals of the fire. It was everything a night in the woods should be.

Around midnight the rain started. This would usually be a sign that camping was about to stop being fun, but we’d put away pretty much all of our gear before retiring, we’d put a tarp over the tent, and the tent proved to be far more water-tight than our old tents were. So the several hours of rain ended up being pretty much a non-entity.

To sum up: camping was really really fun and I want to go again SOON!

But we had to get back home because Grey’s final dance recital was 5 pm on Friday. Grey has been going to dance classes all year. He’s been good about going, although he doesn’t talk about it much. I think he did it and was ok with it, but definitely didn’t love it. The recital kept getting more and more complex. We had to pony up $55 in OCTOBER for a costume that turned out to be a very crappy, Halloween-style tuxedo. There was the Sunday morning lineup to buy tickets to the rehearsal. The tickets were pricey ($20), and they said we’d need to buy them even for Grey if we wanted him to watch any of the recital. Group pictures were $15. A dvd of the performance was $45. They sold bouquets, including bouquets of lollipops which made Grey feel like dancing = entitled to sweets. Then there was a dress rehearsal at 4 pm on a Wednesday, which required massive coordination to make happen. The upside was that Grey did a great job. He looked really cute. He worked hard and paid attention. I’m sure he learned some important things in the classes. But he didn’t love it. Thank heavens. I hated the whole circumstances of the recital, and I’m relieved never to be doing THAT again.

I loved camping. I didn’t love the dance class. Perhaps it’s just as well I’m a mother of boys!