Andrea’s Weblog

We had our first McPherson camping expedition last weekend. Mistletoe State Park is less than a half hour away and seemed like a good place for our inaugural camping trip. Packing for the expedition was quite involved: tent, bike, food, swimming stuff, dog stuff, bug stuff, sun stuff . . . Much more than I’ve ever had to pack before. The car was packed to the gills – so packed that Frank took a separate car when he got off work.

Elizabeth, overly tired from missing her nap, cried the whole way there. Things were not off to a good start. Buoyed by the novelty of setting up camp, Elizabeth and I managed to set up the tent by ourselves.

The campsite was right on the lake, with a beautiful view. A gaggle of geese floated in the water right in front of our site. This did not escape the notice of Finley, a water retriever by nature. The geese seemed to enjoy taunting him. Elizabeth also enjoyed the site. She kept trying to find her swimming suit and water shoes to put on for a dip. When we did venture down to the lake, she couldn’t stop saying “swimming water! swimming water!” for a half hour. She had a great time, but I somehow managed to pull her away when it was time to go.

It was definitely a challenge to keep her from running off to the bathroom or off to the lake. At first, we would run after her, grab her and say “no walking on the street by yourself!” Next thing we knew she would be running away again. By this point, we knew she knew she was being bad. It was stressful on us and fun for her. Time to change the approach. So, instead of chasing after her we changed to friendly voices and said, “Elizabeth, can you hop back down the hill?” Hop. Hop. Hop. She’s back at the campsite. We put our energy toward creatively distracting her rather than running and yelling. “Oh, Elizabeth! Come give Finley a hug!”

Whew camping with a toddler was a lot of work, but we all had a great time. We’ll work on relaxing more on the next trip – I hope!