Camping with Kids (or Are We Having Fun Yet?)

At one point in my life, backpacking was one of my greatest loves. I loved the way everything I needed fit on my back, the way life's complexities seem to dissolve in the simple tasks of living on the trail.  I loved going to bed with the dark and rising with the light, loved the challenge of a hard day's hike, loved the beauty each new bend in the trail promised to reveal.  Looking back, I realize that one reason I loved backpacking so much was that I did most of it in northern California, in the summer, when it hardly ever rained. The tent I carried often went unused; sleeping under the stars was one of things I loved most.
Unaccustomed as I was to the Appalachians, backpacking in western North Carolina was, for me, something of a downer. Not only did every wooded mile seem more or less like every other wooded mile-- how I missed the granite expanses, the open sky-- but, oh, how it rained! Even when it wasn't actually raining, I felt the rain: in the soggy ground, my moldering raincoat, the dripping trees. Huddled in my tent, or worse yet, perched on my sodden pack during a lightning storm, I often thought of  my parents' gloat anytime a thunderstorm loomed beyond our cozy cabin: "What a great night NOT to be camping."
Still, I love camping, and I've been determined to keep doing it, even with our young children. Since Clayton's birth,we have camped in North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and South Dakota. Those trips have been many things, but relaxing is not one of them. And yet, as with childbirth, memory seems to fade the most painful parts and leaves a rosy glow, so we've kept on.
This weekend we went camping at Cascade Lake, about an hour from our house. Don's cross country team had a meet on Saturday morning, so we didn't leave until the afternoon. I'd spent the entire morning packing up; what used to fit into a backpack now fills an entire van. The camping gear is the least of it. There are the snacks, the sippy cups, the swimming gear, the sand toys, the warm clothes, the bedtime books, the stuffed animals we couldn't possibly live without, and, of course, the thing of death. The thing of death is a red, plastic tote that serves as our camping catch-all. Don dubbed it that on our first multi-day camping trip in Virginia. "Where are the matches?" "The red thing." Where's the soap? "Try the red thing."  "Where's the flashlight... Oh, don't tell me, the thing of death." Packing up the van for our two week trip to South Dakota this summer, we weren't sure everything would fit.  "Maybe we could leave this?" I suggested, gesturing at the much maligned tote; I had assumed Don hated it. "Oh no," he said. "We've got to have the thing of death."
Last Saturday, the one thing I hadn't packed was Dee Dee's pac-n-play, a decision I'd come to while shopping at Home Depot a few days before. I had spread out an end-of-the-season outdoor seat cushion on the floor to get a better look, and Dee Dee had immediately laid down on it with her butt up in the air.  "Seeping!" she said.
"She gets it!" I thought. "She'll do fine on a pad." One less thing to bring, and I wasn't sure both pac-n-plays would fit in our tent anyway. (Last summer, they slept on the tent floor with us, but last summer they were still nursing and basically immobile.)
At first, everything went just as I'd pictured it. We set up our tents, suited up the kids, and hit the lake for a late afternoon swim. It was idyllic and peaceful, and I was looking forward to the rest of the evening, eating veggie dogs and s'mores around a campfire, the very best of non-backcountry camping. But then the storm clouds gathered and thunder rumbled, and the lake quickly emptied. Dutifully, we pulled our protesting children out of the water and traipsed back to our campsite. We were fifty yards away when it began to pour.  "Quick, quick" we said, shoving the three damp, sandy kids into the tent. I grabbed the thing of death off the picnic table and heaved it in after them, then scrambled inside myself.
"No dat-do! No dat-do!" Dee Dee said pitifully as I zipped up the tent. Then she began to cry. "That way! Lake! Dee Dee... simming!"
I glanced around the tent for some distraction; my eyes fell on the thing of death. Snacks! I thought. We have snacks!  I reached for the cloth grocery bag inside and pulled out  a bag of shelled peanuts. (In a drier moment, I had imagined Don and I drinking beer around the campfire after the kids went to sleep, eating peanuts and tossing the shells into the fire.) Now the girls fell on the nuts, chewing them up shell and all and spitting the damp remains onto the sleeping bags and Thermarests.
"Wait!" Clayton demanded. "I'm still all wet! They're making a mess!"
I got him out of his bathing suit and into dry clothes, then tackled the girls, already a perilously long time in their less-than-absorbent swim diapers. But, oh no! The diaper bag was in the car, and it was still storming. "We could just use the diapers we took off them before," I suggested. "They're not that wet."
Ignoring the gross factor as best we could, we unrolled their used diapers and fastened them on again. We had, of course, no way of knowing which girl had been wearing which diaper, and I thought, as I have so many times, that times like this must be one reason twins are so close. They eat food that's been in the other's mouth, they pee in each other's diapers...
As the storm raged on and the tent became increasingly littered with sodden peanut shells and damp tortilla chip crumbs, the general mood dampened. Don was understandably grumpy. After all, he was spending precious hours of his shortened weekend in a damp tent with two soggy toddlers spitting up peanut shells and a three year old who, even under the driest of circumstances, freaks out if he gets a drop of water on his pants. "Maybe we should just go home," Don said.
"Let's go! Let's go!" Dee Dee agreed. (Then again, she always says that.)
We can't just give up! I thought. I wasn't thrilled with the rain, either, but I was way to proud to throw in the towel now just because of a little storm. And, wasn't it sort of fun holed up in here with everyone? "No," Don said dryly. "It isn't."
"How are we going to cook our hot dogs?" Clayton despaired.  "Everything's all wet!"
I had noticed a covered picnic area a few hundred yards from our tent, and I imagined us eating our dinner there, safe and dry, while the kids scampered about under the pavilion. Then I imagined lugging everything over there in the rain: the kids, the stove, the water bottles, the cooler... Ugh.
I took a deep breath, let go of my girl scout pride, and said, "How about Taco Bell!"
Galvanized by the prospect of ninety-nine cent cheesey roll-ups, the troops rallied. We rushed everyone to the car and drove to town. The rain did not let up.
"Do you really want to go home?" I asked Don. What about our pancakes? I thought. Our morning at the lake? Our commitment to camping?
"Well, if this keeps up, it's not going to be very much fun, that's for sure."
An hour later, things were looking up. Having devoured a cheesy roll-up a piece and finished off two servings of fiesta potatoes, the kids were racing around the empty Taco Bell and pushing each other on the wiggly chairs. I was grateful that the only other customers were an elderly couple whose grandson, as they described him, was even wilder than Dee Dee. (The nice thing about eating at fast food restaurants with kids is that you don't have to worry that the sixteen-year old behind the counter is giving you a dirty look behind your back; in fact, he's too busy with his I-phone to even notice what your kids are up to.) By the end of the meal, Don had apologized for being so grumpy, and the rain had stopped! No problem, I thought. We'll go back, roast a marshmallow or two, and put our exhausted kids to bed.
Clayton, who likes to know what's coming, thought that was a pretty good plan. But, then, of course, the fire wouldn't start, even with the lighter fluid offered by a kind neighbor, who happened to be an ex-colleague of mine. And Clayton kept complaining that the ground was wet, the trees were dripping, where could he put his feet when he sat in his little camping chair? We finally gave up on the fire and negotiated everyone into their flannel PJ's. I read their books all together, and managed to cherish for a moment my sweet family, snug as bugs in the cozy tent. Now they would all drift peacefully off to sleep just like at home, and Don and I would finally get the fire going and have some time together...
With the sense of relief I feel every night at bedtime after I've brushed the last tooth and read the last book-- that's it, I'm finally done!-- I crawled for the door of the tent.  "Lie down, Dee Dee," I told her. "Time for seeping!"
Yeah, right.
"No dat-do! No dat-do!" she started up again, pawing at the zipper of the tent, the tears starting. Sylvia wailed from the pac-n-play, too, but at least she was contained.
"Mom! She doesn't want to be in here! She doesn't want to be in here! Mom, I'm not zipped up! Am I still zipped up? My coccoon! Where's Pooh? Mom! Get Dee Dee!"
Oh no, I thought. Please, no. Can't they just go the f*#@ to sleep? But what else was there to do? Sylvia sounded like she was being tortured, and there were other campsites only yards away.
"I'll go in there," Don offered. (I forgive you for being grumpy, my wonderful husband.)
So, as Don crawled inside to situate Clayton and comfort Dee Dee, I slid a squawking Sylvia through the few inches of space between the top of her pac-n-play and the tent ceiling and pulled her out the door. It will be fine, I told myself. Sylvia's easy to get to sleep.
Three hours later, I had sat with her by the cold fire under the dripping trees, rocked her in the car, walked through the campground with her on my back, laid down with her in the other tent with a still-awake Clayton who pulled at her feet and laughed at her antics. At ten thirty, I asked Don, partly in jest, partly in desperation, if we should just go home. Sylvia would surely fall asleep in the car; we'd be in bed before one... At eleven thirty, I felt her head finally relax against my back as I trudged up the pitch black road through the campground. "Big poop," she mumbled, and promptly fell asleep. I walked another few minutes for good measure, and then took her back to the tent. Stay asleep, I prayed. Please stay asleep. I lay her down in the pack-n-play; she stayed asleep! But what about the poop? I thought. I can't let her sleep in poop! I stooped over the tent and sniffed her bottom. It did smell a little poopy. But she was sound asleep, and I had just spent the last three hours trying to get her to fall asleep! Wasn't it crazy to change her diaper now? I remembered what a friend had told me when I agonized over letting Clayton cry himself to sleep as an infant: "What if he's pooped?" "That's what diaper rash medicine is for," she had said matter-of-factly.  Okay, I thought, I'll let her sleep!
Exhausted, I collapsed into Clayton's sleeping bag, since he had eventually fallen asleep in my sleeping bag in the other tent with Don, enjoying the king of Thermarests I'd treated myself to when I'd decided that if we were going to be car camping, I might as well live it up a little. Clay's sleeping bag was cozy, but I spent a restless night. Had Dee Dee slipped onto the cold ground? Had she rolled under the pac-n-play and was trapped? Was Sylvia freezing without her blanket? It was almost a relief to see the tent gradually lighten with the dawn.
In the morning, the inside of Don's old tent was so wet that Clayton, whose pajamas were as damp as everything else inside, cried out that he'd wet the bed, he needed dry pajamas, before letting Don cuddle him back to sleep. Sylvia, last to bed, was first to rise, but when I tried to sneak her out of the tent, her sister woke, too. She stood there sleepily in her flannel pajamas at the tent door and said, "Dee Dee. Look. Lake." I thought I'd never seen or heard a cuter thing. (For the record, Sylvia had not pooped.)
The girls and I walked along the empty beach, Dee Dee on my back in the Ergo, Sylvia in my arms. Mist rose from the lake, and water droplets like shimmering  jewels clung to the perfect spider webs in the reeds around the shore. Afterwards, we ate banana pancakes at the picnic table, the twins sitting side by side on the bench like two little peas in a pod. Later, although not late enough that the sun had broken through the lingering cloud cover, Dee Dee insisted on "simming." We went back to the lake, where Sylvia delighted in watching the fish swarming for pieces of Wonderbread some bigger kids had brought, and Dee Dee jumped off the dock into knee-high water again and again. Clayton and Don joined us later, and watching my son standing on the dock in the still misty air, gathering the courage to jump, while Dee Dee, blue-lipped and shivering, sprinted down the dock to her dad, and Sylvia splashed in the shallows at my feet, I felt so grateful. Here was my family, all healthy, all joyful, together in a beautiful place, living an experience that I'm sure Don and I will remember for years to come.  Later, we coaxed our shivering kids back to the campground, where we made hot chocolate and finally cooked our veggie dogs. Don took Clayton on a paddle boat while the girls and I broke our sodden camp...
By noon, the sky had finally cleared, and the lake looked irresistible. The girls and I took one last dip while Clayton sat on the dock with his dad, begging him for more stories of the Lochness monster. When it was time to leave, Cascade Lake was once again a shimmering paradise of summer fun, and we all hated to go. That night, Don built a fire in the fire pit in our back yard, and we finally roasted marshmallows. (I was also grateful for the bath the kids could take afterwards.) Later, kids peacefully in bed, Don and I sat around the fire and chatted about how we should buy a new waterproof tent, a lantern, maybe a shelter with mosquito netting to go over the picnic table... We can't wait to go camping again.