As wonderful and fun as any trip is to the Beach House, no trip is without its challenges. And I have to say, that going with children, the challenges have multiplied. Okay, so before I went with children, I don’t remember there being any challenges. But now, there are. However, they make the trip that much more fun, though, too.
At any rate, I thought I’d end this stretch of posts about the Beach House with a nice dose of reality.
I don’t have any pictures to show for this first issue we had – probably because it is one that I don’t want to remember, but unfortunately will without need for photos. Ug. Camping with a baby at the Beach House, 4th of July weekend is NOT fun. Thankfully, at least we had a huge tent that fit all of us comfortably. Gage and Cooper had their little room, Kaden had the pack-n-play, and Matt and I had a mattress. Not too bad, right? Wrong.
First of all, there was a big black bear running past our tent the first evening we were there, which had me in a bit of a concerned state. We fortunately were not in the tent at the time and were pretty sure that the fireworks had it scared out of its mind and bugging us was the least of its worries.
Kaden never slept in the pack-n-play; he slept with me, in my sleeping bag on our deflating mattress. The first night I wanted to cry myself to sleep. I have no clue what time I finally fell asleep, given that we went to bed at 10pm (because it was still light out) and the fireworks were going off for hours. Hours. On the 3rd of July! And when the wall of a tent is the only material separating you from the noise of huge fireworks, that makes for some difficult sleepin’.
When we finally fell asleep something woke me up and I remained awake listening to a mosquito buzzing around my head. My arms were completely stuck in position around Kaden and moving them risked waking him up with the squish-swishing of my sleeping bag, not to mention jolting him awake.
Eventually I fell back to sleep and after waking several times to nurse Kaden, I woke to the boys fighting over the blanket at 5:30am. Fortunately, not long after, my mom heard them too and took all 3 boys into the camper for breakfast. The next night was more of the same, although Kaden had been asleep in my arms for about an hour before we actually went to bed, and I let myself enjoy snuggling with him all night long. But, we were awakened by Cooper at 2:30, crying because he’d slid out of his sleeping bag and again at 6am with him taunting Gage that ‘you’re not going to get a trophy but I am…’ what??
Camping wasn’t the highlight but it certainly was an experience and I figure its only going to get better as the boys get older.
Other issues were…
-Cooper deciding that his legs didn’t work well and he needed to be carried (preferably by Grammie) on all of our walks.
- Gage had a hard time knowing he is a little boy but wanting to do ‘big boy’ things. Like, lighting off fireworks and going down the beach with Noah to make new friends . This scene tugged at my heart-strings a bit – seeing my boy venturing off on his own to be with children he didn’t know. He seemed a bit lost and timid, but was comforted by Noah’s presence. Gage would run down to check out the next firework to be let off, then cautiously would run to the safety of the bank before blast-off.
- It was a bit challenging to keep Kaden happy during our trip. He likes his down time – he likes variety. He doesn’t really like doing the same thing all day long. But at the Beach House, it was pretty much be carried or be asleep. Until we set up this little beauty that Kjersten brought for Hank. Nice. It helped, but Kaden still didn’t seem satisfied. I guess he was just a little out of sorts. Sleeping all night in the crook of my arm will do that to ya.
- Again, Kaden was out of sorts, and at times, really just wanted to eat Grammie’s chin.
- I mentioned the other day about Gage’s eyes. I’ve never really noticed until recently how sensitive they are to the sun… poor little guy. If he didn’t have these ‘Bomber Glasses’ on…
… he looked like this… SERIOUSLY, this is just because of the sun!
Matt wanted me to add that among his 4th of July speed-bumps were: only packing one pair of jeans and getting them wet and dirty the first night… packing only sandals and no socks… and getting to the Port Townsend Brewery 5 minutes after they’d closed.
Oh, and the lack of ladders around this place…
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