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Taking Nicole camping with us turned out not to be our best idea.  Our first problem was that since she couldn’t walk she became filthy very quickly if allowed to crawl around.  She spent most of her time either in someone’s arms, in her high-chair, or in the stroller.  She seemed happy enough most of the day.  She was a little wiggly on the bus at times, but in her stroller along the paths she would either sleep or ride along contentedly.

Our biggest challenge came at bedtime.  Typically I read her some stories, sing her a song and then lay her in bed where she cries herself to sleep.  She usually doesn’t cry too much, but in a strange place I thought her crying might be worse and I didn’t dare annoy the entire campsite by letting  her try.  First I walked her around until she fell asleep, but she woke up as soon as I tried to lay her down.  Then we thought we’d see if she’d be content laying in our bed with us.  She just wiggled endlessly and became quite unhappy.  Frustrated and tired, I put her back in the stroller and walked around in circles until she fell asleep.  It was too dark to go far and I didn’t want her to wake the campsite while I found a flashlight. I carefully removed her from the stroller and laid in my bed with her in my arms and she was awake within five minutes.  I put her to sleep again by holding her close and rocking her as I paced around by her bed and once I felt that she was sufficiently sleeping I laid her down and she stayed asleep, sometime after 11:00 PM.  She woke up a little after 4:00 AM ready for breakfast and play.  I grabbed a few things quickly and found my way to the bathroom which was lit and had a floor not made of dirt.  I fed her and let her crawl around on the bathroom floor until about 6:30 AM when I could see that the sun had come up.  At which point I could see well enough to take her on a walk in her stroller.  She actually fell asleep, but I only got a 10 minute break on my bed before the other kids started waking up and woke Nicole up in the process.  We decided we didn’t want to try another night like that and so instead of sleeping one more night in our tents and then leaving in the morning, we packed up our campsite and left after dinner.