I learned young that houses with small children are where good furniture comes to die. I inherited my first kitchen table from an aunt whose three children had spent the last 15 years breaking it in. No amount of cleaning could remove all the hidden patches of stickiness.

When I eventually replaced that table I was saddened when the first kitchen table I purchased started to go the same way. Homemade play dough, finger painting, and a toddler whose first instinct was to gnaw on the table rather than her food took their toll. Then I opened a home daycare and we gathered round the table to learn about ice with food coloring and salt, made candles, and melted crayons. Little bits of our days ground themselves permanently into our table, which I realized was likely to last just a few years rather than carry us through the next decade so I looked for a solution. It was there that I discovered the best application of vinyl  ever: Fitted vinyl tablecloths.

We love the round ones available at Happy Accents, and have also found a woman who makes custom fitted cloths for unusually sized and shaped tables.

My vinyl tablecloth habit (my seventh is on its way here as I type)  is probably worse for the environment than my drive through cheeseburger habit, but I will spare you the analysis this time…

We’ve camped with 9 month to 7 year-old kids in California, Utah, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland — we hope to cover lots more territory in the coming years. Each time we camp we learn a few things. Then, thinking perhaps we’ve discovered it all, we take another trip where we fall down again and learn more. It’s a lovely cycle, really.

Lessons learned

#1 — Our first outing was with a group of parents, where we learned that mobile babies get really, really dirty when you camp. We’re pretty laid back folks when it comes to dirt on our children, but we had to make a conscious effort to let go even more than usual. This battle was best left un-picked.

#2 — The next camping trip taught us the importance of carefully choosing a camping site. The noise of the strong wind may not have bothered us adults, but it sure kept the dogs up, who kept the baby up, who kept our tent-mate up, who may have decided then and there never to have children. Sleep deprivation is not pretty.

#3 — Our third trip taught us our most valuable lesson. Even babies who can’t walk or talk can open a tent zipper. You must close the zipper to all tent doors up high where your child can’t reach. If you sleep more soundly than your child or are camping near a hazard like a river, you may even want to consider locking yourselves in with a zip tie that must be cut off by a grown up. (A zip tie may even be a necessity with tents that cannot be zipped upward.) We were lucky, in this case. Our son had only gotten about ten feet away when I noticed his absence. We were also camping with a large group in an area completely devoid of bears, snakes, waterfalls, poison ivy, and many of the other hazards that might be present when you’re camping somewhere other than the grassy field of a large fenced fairground.

#4 — This one was also a doozie. Never camp in a small three-season tent at the base of a snow-covered mountain in late November — even in California. Springing for a motel room will be money well-spent.  Silly us, we did our best to snuggle up and toughed it out. At the time, we were still co-sleeping and night nursing. My breast has never been colder and I have never been happier that my kid keeps his hat on. Needless to say, we took the rest of the winter off. We’ve since invested in a bigger tent and now check the weather before planning our nightly accommodations.

#5 — The following spring, we learned that the best place for your toddler’s booster seat is on the ground. It’s not very secure on a picnic table bench. (At this point you are probably questioning our common sense!) We also discovered one of our two favorite products ever – the toddler-sized Sunday Afternoon hats.

#6 — A key lesson we learned in Utah this spring is that a river-side site that would have been perfect and relaxing before we had kids is absolutely frightening with little kids in tow. As we drove up and did an initial assessment of the site, I had visions of children slipping off the banks and into the sweeping current.… We were fortunate to find an alternate site in a safer part of the campground.

#7 — On the last few trips we’ve realized how our confident, busy, and increasingly independent kids are easier to see in the dark when they wear glow sticks around their necks. The glow sticks pull double-duty by making getting into a sleeping bag seem that much cooler: the kids really enjoyed having their glow sticks in their sleeping bags with them. (This is not appropriate for younger kids who might be tempted to suck or chew on them.) Headlamps and camp chairs made to fit are also hot items to bring along.

Q&A

Our learning curve has leveled out and the insights we bring home now are more logistic in nature and less exciting, so I will spare you those; however, a mom recently asked me a few great questions about camping with babies and toddlers and I have decided to share our answers here.

Did you camp with your kids when they were very young?

We started both of our kids at around 9 months or so. It wasn’t a conscious choice to wait until then, though. They were fall babies so it just worked out that we camped in the spring and summer.

How is it getting a toddler to nap in a tent in the middle of the day?

If your child will nurse to sleep and it’s not too hot out then it might be easy. Otherwise you might need to be creative. Maybe your child naps in a carrier, stroller, travel crib or carseat? We love the Ergo and just go for a walk around nap-time. If that fails we create a reason to go for a drive. I once saw parents with a jogging stroller and a guitar trying to serenade their toddler to sleep with lullabies on a quiet trail.

Can you get a kid to sleep at 8pm when adults are up talking and keeping them up?

We don’t worry much about bedtime when we are camping. I used to stress about it so I could have my time at the campfire, but I have since learned that it is far less stressful to rock a child to sleep in my arms by the fire (and have other folks bring me drinks) than to sequester myself in the tent to sing and rock my toddler to sleep while resenting the fact I was not socializing. As my kids have gotten older they have gotten busier. We now just wait until they are really tired — the trick is to catch them before they are so tired they melt down — and then bedtime in the tent tends to go well. On our most recent trip, we camped with a family who was bringing their 3 and 5 year-old on their first trip. Bedtimes went smoothly all around and all four adults even got in a game of cards! However, I think it is helpful to regard that adult time as an unexpected luxury the first few times you camp. This way you won’t be too disappointed if you find yourself stuck in the tent with a little one. The bright side is that if you go to sleep when they do you might catch more sleep, and every parent could use some of that.

More on sleep

Naturally, bedtimes are not always such smooth affairs. I was just talking to a friend today who had a miserable first camping experience. Her son woke up in the middle of the night and would not stop crying. He was used to always sleeping in the crib — his routine and usual comforts were completely absent. If your child has never slept anywhere but his crib, then you might consider setting up a pack and play in your tent. (Did I mention how nice it is to have a bigger tent now that we are a family of four?)

We travel a lot and one thing we have done to improve the consistency of their away-from-home bedtime routine is to buy each a travel sleeping bag / air mattress combo. We take them everywhere with us. This way the bed is familiar whether they’re in a tent, in a hotel, or at grammy’s house.

Our two year-old still winds up sleeping with us sometimes when we camp. A pair of zip-together-able rectangular (non-mummy) sleeping bags and Therm-a-Rest pads that strap together make this more comfortable for our family. If someone gets shafted regarding the sleeping arrangements it tends to be me, so I have learned to toss an extra blanket and or sleeping pad in the tent to make the night more comfortable.

If you are still night nursing a little one, I have heard that air mattresses can be more comfortable for moms lying on their sides than the less substantial foam pads or Therm-a-Rests. This tidbit is based on hearsay rather than my own experience.

Every family is different

There’s no magic answer for when the time is right to start camping with your kids, so you’ll just need to try it when you are ready. It might turn into a sleep-deprived nightmare, or it could end up being easier and more enjoyable than weekends at home. Either way, you will have given your kids a new experience and some fresh air and created some stories to share down the line. If your first trip doesn’t work out, then you can adjust and try again when the kids are older or you are more ready.

In this crazy info world of internet, TV, mobile phones, Wii, etc., it is relaxing to unplug and get away as a family. I love camping with my kids and hope you do, too.

Have a camping story? Advice about camping with babies, toddlers, or even bigger kids? Questions? Please share below!

We had lots of fun making kick-the-can ice cream at the Rust Nature Sanctuary’s spring Eco Fair a few months ago, and finally drank enough mediocre coffee for a repeat performance at Playschool. I found recipes and instructions at Kaboose.com and dairyspot.com and then co-mingled and finessed them to work with the contents of my refrigerator. The result was definitely worth the two months of reduced quality coffee!

Afterward, we wanted to do it again (and again and again) so I requested large coffee cans on freecycle and found out that very few folks are getting their coffee in large cans around here. In addition to the fact that we live in a fairly well to do county where many folks can afford better coffee, many brands have switched their bulk packaging to plastic. I wiggled my way out of that conundrum by hoofing it to REI in Fairfax to buy The Mega Ball, a plastic contraption designed to replace the coffee can.

The verdict in our unscientific, one run vs one run test is that kick the can ice cream kicks the mega ball’s butt!

Kick the Can Ice Cream tricks and observations:
I bought all the ingredients but the ice at the store. As luck would have it the bulk of the ice cubes in our freezer were made of coffee or contained mint leaves or tang, but we used them anyway.This made the whole production give off a heavenly scent. Our coffee can started to leak coffee ice cubes right away so we covered it with a trash compactor bag. It was still leaking so we covered it with a towel. The towel made it soft which made it safer to send down the slide and push in the swing at the playground. That made us happy. Very happy.  I think the towel also insulated the can a bit and wonder if that helped the ice cream along? Our outer can lid was shredded when we opened the bundle up, and that made it a one use thing — which made us sad given that large coffee cans appear to be headed towards extinction. Our inner can was intact which was quite a relief since a hole would have meant salty (coffee-mint-fake-orange-flavored) ice cream. Our ice cream was the consistency of soft serve and we (6 experienced tasters aged 1 to 30) liked it a lot.

Mega Ball tricks and observations:
The Mega Ball was simpler, but I missed the journey. We didn’t need to wrap it in a towel so it was too hard to safely launch down the slide. The mega ball is one of those funny shaped things that takes a long time to dry on my counter. I like the idea of the Mega Ball and will continue making my kids earn their ice cream with it this summer, but will switch back to kick-the-can after two more months of coffee drinking.

My breast-fed daughter was extremely sensitive to dairy as an infant. It presented at around 6 weeks — in the middle of our cross-country move — as extreme fussiness and obvious tummy pain. It finally went away, for the most part, within a week or two once I completely cut dairy out of my diet. This meant reading labels and watching not just for milk, but also for milk proteins. Since then I have come across many moms more savvy than I was at the time asking for helping in living dairy-free. In response I have typed up a cryptic ramble on how I survived. I am sharing our experience here, but it is up to you and the experts in your babies’ lives to decide if you need to cut dairy out of your diet.

I was milk-free for eight months while nursing then slowly added milk products back to my own diet. By about 15 months my little one started on occasional milk products. By two she was a champion cow milk drinker. The dairy-free diet was pretty easy once we got used to it, and was totally worth it for us. My little one went from a gassy, colicky, unhappy creature (with a very cranky mom) to a sweet little baby (with a much happier mom) in a matter of weeks.

Based on my own unscientific research — lots of reading and talking to folks — it is my (completely unprofessional) understanding that dairy sensitivities are often misdiagnosed as reflux and unnecessarily medicated. At my own pediatrician’s office every doctor I saw gave me different advice. Much of it was conflicting, and one doctor even suggested that I stop breastfeeding and use the really expensive formula made for kids with dairy issues. I never got a clear professional diagnosis, but I know the changes I saw in my baby.

Tricks for dairy-free living

• Read labels. Even things like bread, instant oatmeal, frozen meatballs and cereal bars often have milk protein hidden in there, and we found that if we let any dairy sneak in we did not see the results.
• You need to get fat from other places. In my case, and probably in a toddler’s case a lot of every day fat comes from milk products. I needed to add in lots of nuts (cashews, cashew butter, almond butter, sunflower butter are alternative to peanut butter) and olive oil to make up for lost fat & protein and avoid cravings.
• It is harder to stick to it when there’s “regular” food around. I put my whole family on a no or low dairy diet along with us.
• Bring your own food on any outing.
• Go to a “crunchy” website and look up vegan recipes. You can always add the meat back in.

Staples and products we relied on (and where we found them)

• Soy milk – The Kirkland brand at Costco is pretty good & most little kids love it. Mine like it too much so I water it down. It also comes in little single boxes at Trader Joes. If you have concerns about too much soy consider oat milk, hazelnut milk, almond milk, or rice milk.
• Fake cheese – Most cheese substitutes suck when you first cut cheese out of your diet but you get used to them. We liked the Trader Joe’s selection best because they had both shredded and singles which were easy to manage.
• Soy yogurt – Target has the “silk brand” and the vanilla flavor is so sweet is tastes like pudding. Trader Joe’s carries their own brand, and it has a re-useable lid (silk just has a foil lid). If you like the big containers, you need to go all the way to Whole Foods.
• Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese – This is carried by the health food store in market station, Giant, Wegmans (I think) and Trader Joe’s. Watch out though — it is like 100% evil partially hydrogenated oils.
• Tofu (as ricotta substitute) – We used the food processor to blend tofu, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, and olive oil for a yummy vegan lasagna filling. We never stopped making lasagna this way. It is really good.
• Costco Potstickers – A lot of prepared food has milk products in it, but at Costco you can get Potstickers in the freezer section that are dairy free. Trader Joe’s has lots of dairy free stuff, and great labels.
• Veggie Booty – They’re like green cheetos. For Goodness Sake, the health food store in Market Station, has it.
• Coconut milk – It’s a good substitute for making things like cream of tomato soup.
• Vegan cookies – Both the health food stores in Leesburg have them
• Trader Joe’s Cats Cookies
• Tofutti Cuties — They’re like ice cream sandwiches
• Homemade smoothie popsicles — Just pour smoothie into popsicle molds and eat them instead of ice cream
• Dried fruit

Eating out is hard, but a lot of Asian food is dairy-free. Thai, Chinese, and Japanese restaurants are good places to eat out. We also tried and enjoyed Z-pizza in Leesburg after hearing that they can make your pizza with soy cheese on request.

Further Resources

• Kellymom
• La Leche League
• Loudoun Allergy Network — I blogged about it here

P.S. I was always ravenous while nursing and snacked a lot back then. I also craved junk food of all kinds while nursing, hence all the snack/ junk food on my list 

There are so many ticks out there this year! It can be a tricky line to walk wanting to get the kids outdoors but also wanting to keep them safe from nasty chronic stuff like lyme disease. I talked to our ped’s office extensively about this after finding our first deer tick — which looked like a freckle — this spring and what they emphasized most was finding the ticks and getting them off within 6–8 hours to minimize chance of transmission.

These are some things that we have embraced in our family’s tick prevention campaign:

• making bath time an after-hike ritual or at least changing clothes shortly after the hike
• wearing hats (we love Sunday Afternoons hats)
• offer the kids something tasty (like a chocolate chip) if they find a tick on themselves or their siblings or you
• google lyme disease — it totally motivated me to step up our tick checks
• if you find a tick, a pair of clean tweezers is all you need for removal — forget all the crazy ways to remove ticks that we grew up with, like flames, alcohol or oil (yes, I had exciting childhood tick removal experiences)
• talk to your pediatrician if you find a tick or if you have questions

In case you need further motivation, I have an fascinating story involving a tick, a belly button — not mine or my kids’, thank goodness! — and a trip to the emergency room. I will spare you the details and just let your imagination alone motivate you to do tick checks after every hike. (Getting off soap box now.…)

If you do find a tick that has embedded itself, make sure you remove it as soon as possible. If you remove a deer tick, you may wish to keep it intact and bring it to your doctor for testing to determine whether it is a lyme disease carrier. If it is not a deer tick, what you do with the pest is entirely up to your own discretion.

Happy hiking, and don’t forget to channel your inner apes by participating in a post-hike communal tick-check grooming session!

After numerous false starts Peter has created the bookshelves I have been wanting for over a year.

I like it so much I put him to work on another set of shelves.

In the end all it took was a half dozen wooden dowels, screws, hand saw, electric drill, and no more than an hour to convert the kids’ regular shelves into something special. Even at Discount School Supply it would cost over $100 for something similar.

As with many of our projects there were failed attempts along the way:

• Plastic gutters from freecycle. Too big. We converted these into ramps for water and ball play out back.

  

• Metal wall shelves from Ikea. Too tempting for little children to climb, too easy to push books onto the floor. We moved these into a utility closet.

  

Here’s what worked for us: soak in hot soapy water indefinitely, scrub a little with sponge, and then finish the job with rubbing alcohol (or the strongest stuff in your liquor cabinet if you don’t have rubbing alcohol). Good luck!

This post is not meant to dismiss stay at home dads or any hands-on work outside the home parent as needing a list of ideas, but to respond to the fact that (like or not) in many areas stay at home moms are often the primary provider, and sometimes they might need to give their partner a list of ideas to get some time alone in the house.

My husband is in charge of the kids a lot while I work in the evening or on the weekends. They like to go…

• on hikes with the dog
• to the river (with nets)
• to any park
• play at the mall
• grocery shopping
• to the pet store to look at animals

However, they spend most of their time together right here at home searching YouTube for cute videos of kids singing Raffi songs, playing with our pet rats, and helping my husband re-learn to play the guitar

Once our kids started to show an interest in climbing I switched to the pack and play which seems to be harder to climb out of, and by approx 18 months they were in mattresses on the floor — which seem safer than toddler beds to me, and are more comfortable on nights when one of us ended sleeping with a little one to ease the transition. They are now 2 and 4 and we still haven’t bothered with a toddler bed. We’ll probably keep their mattresses on the floor until they are ready for bunk beds

Here’s what worked for us:

We went to the store and I let him choose a bunch of gloves. Then we put them in a basket by the door and he could choose which one he wanted to wear every time we went out. Once he was in charge of which gloves to wear whether or not to wear them was less of an issue. We’ll see if the same tactic works for #2.