Mark and I love camping. It was like one of those things you discuss on a first date, “I like camping. Oh you like camping? Let’s get married”. That’s pretty much how that happened.

We used to go camping all the time pre-baby, but we haven’t done it once since Cooper was born, aka 17 months. So we wanted to take a weekend and venture into the woods. We decided we should take baby steps though, you know since we have a baby. So we went as far as the backyard.

Mark and Coop spent all afternoon setting up the tent and sleeping bags, building a fire and getting the grill ready. I ran to the store and got veggie burgers, (it’s lent and it’s Friday) veggies to grill, baked beans and corn. We got the lantern out, some beers, and put our jackets and boots on. We ate a real live camping dinner, and sat by the fire and talked.

Then came bed time.

Here’s the thing about my child. He only sleeps in the crib. We started sleep training at 2 weeks and by 2 months old he napped and went to bed solely in his crib. Our sleep routine takes no more than 2 minutes. We put him in his sleep sack, lay him in his crib with his teddy bear and turn on this little light/aquarium/sing song thing. It’s pretty specatualar.

That is until we travel. Or camp. Or fly. He does NOT sleep on planes. He does not sleep in our bed (whether that’s at home or a hotel), and now he wont sleep in a tent. It took from 9pm- 10:45pm for him to finally fall asleep. This was after giving me about 30 kisses, whimpering a lot, walking all around the tent, chugging an entire sip cup of water, telling us lots of stories in gibberish, and climbing all over Mark like he was a jungle gym.

Once he finally passed out I was like “Thank god!”. Then, more fun started because every 10-15 min he’d grunt, whimper and then kick me. This lasted until 12:23am, when he woke up just crying his little head off.

I scooped him up, whacked Mark to get up, brought the baby back inside to his crib (where he passed out in 2 seconds, go figure) and then I face planted in my bed.

Needless to say, next time we camp, this little nugget is sleeping in his pack and play. Or we will just bring him his own tent. Yeah, he’s just getting his own tent for sure.