Back

After all the support and kind words I have received from those of you who liked to read about the good, bad and ugly bits of Gitter life I have decided to reactivate my blog. So, get yourself a morning coffee, and a few minutes of piece and join me. (I usually hide behind a locked bathroom door.....my kids will grow up thinking I have some serious gastrointestinal issues coupled with a bad bladder infection, but the few minutes of solitude are well worth it).

So you might think that after 2 months of silence I would be brimming with stories to tell, not so much. It has been a very busy, but fun summer. We spent a week at a cottage, followed by a week camping with the kids and the cousins. The cottage was great...the camping not so much. I have seen people camping with kids before; I am not sure which cult they belonged to. My Shi is now 11 months old and crawling very well. Taking her to a 60X40 ft dirt area, brimmed by 6ft of poison ivy on all sides perhaps not such a smart idea. Shiloh was really dirty about 2.5 minutes after we got there, she had eaten at least 2 stones, a beer bottle cap (from the fire pit she was playing in) and the odd left over morsel of food with a cigarette butt chaser. No wonder she wouldn`t stay in her seat for dinner that night.

My girl loved the dirt, almost as much as she loved the mud pools we made for her by the lake. She was content to be dirty, have black fingernails, and a particularly great area around her ears and neck where she drooled her milk while she slept, the dirt stuck to these parts really well. She couldn`t have cared less. I tried to be easy going about it. I cut off a pair of Sam`s s old splash pants so she could muck about around the camp site without getting to gross. It seemed like the perfect solution. Then the bugs came out, I was wielding a Costco sized can of bug repellent and dutifully spayed my kids clothes. The pants melted to her legs. What a nightmare.

The bugs loved eating my kids faces. Sam was afraid of the after bite cream and poor Shi was too young to swat them away. We went home when they both had +15bites on their wee faces. Actually, we went home a day early. The last night as I slept with one eye opened, I wondered why Sam was curled up in the corner of the tent. So I got up to get him and tuck him back into his sleeping bag. He woke to tell me that he was too hot and sweaty...hmmm, I had a sweater on and was still cool. Sam had peed the bag! He was wet from his socks to his caller. I stripped him down, gave him my sleeping bag and then noticed that we were all slipping around in a layer of pee, nice. Shiloh woke with all the commotion and could not be persuaded to go back to sleep, so after 30minutes of clean up at 5:15am I headed out with Shi. I knew I couldn`t stay in the camp site for fear of waking everyone up and being breakfast for a million hungry bugs, so off we went to the water. I walked her back and forth the water front until around 6:20am when she finally fell asleep. I waited in a semi-conscience state on a big rock, for the rest of the camp to wake up, Sam and his dad finally came for us around 7:30am, the coffee was made thank God!

The sleeping pads where covered in pee, my sleeping bag and Sam`s. Ahhhh the smell. I couldn`t do it anymore. After 5 nights we packed it in and came home.

I used to be an avid camper, Gitter and I would spend summers in Algonquin canoeing and portaging. Then I couldn`t imagine the confines of car camping. Now, looking back at it, I am really glad that we went. I have packed away the camping gear for the year and started saving for that cottage. I am sure I will like camping again one day, but camping with 4 kids and a baby is at least one baby too many, and quite possibly 4 kids too many as well!!!! I look forward to a cottage with a Bunkie for the kids. Hopefully I won`t be too tired come bed time that I can`t enjoy a drink or 6.