The Family *roll

Some weeks back, S & S posted their tips for successfully camping with an infant. They left out one crucial bit: have a baby like Ezra. Which is to say: a baby that falls asleep of his own accord when you put him down and then stays asleep no matter is going on around him. Ellie is not Ezra. She is not particularly difficult to put to sleep. But she does require relative peace and some combination of being fed, walked or rocked. So the logistics of getting her down for the night were challenging: when we put her to sleep outside the tent, which enabled us to socialize and walk around, we had to figure out how to get her into the tent once asleep without waking her (all that loud zipping and unzipping of tent doors). Didn’t happen. And while putting her to sleep inside the tent was easier, it meant that we were basically trapped in there. And at 3am, after wake-up number 4, “trapped” is very much the right word.

Emily, to her credit, has not yet said, “See! I told you so!” since the camping was very much my idea (I had to promise her a visit from Bill Clinton and a case of cognac to get her to agree to go). I can see now that it was a touch absurd to suggest we go camping seeing as how we had never been camping together before we had a kid. What better time to start then with a three month old, right?

But despite our rough night, the day time was a lot of fun. It was great seeing S & S and seeing Ellie and Ezra together (for those not in the know: Ezra is three weeks younger than Ellie):

In other words: it was totally worth it.