Bedtime With My Baby

I just had the most satisfying late-night hang with Jack, and I never want to forget it.

10/9/2020

We roll up to the new campground around 9… the only arrival time we can muster. We had about a 5 hour drive from Luray, Va to where we are in the back hills of West Virginia at Little Beaver State Park. It is SO dark, so dark……WV dark. We barely note the park entrance before it is upon us…. so, you guessed it…we miss the turn in. I think we all know at this point that this is a big obnoxious ordeal when you’re hauling the Shadow Cruiser around. You just never know what you might be getting yourself into with a casual little turn around. Matt makes it look easy most of the time, but it’s not. After missing our turn in, we are almost immediately faced with one of the steepest hills the ole truck n rig have had to climb….. like just straight up. It felt like a 45 degree incline. My internal panic button is ignited….. We begin our creep up, things are making creaking, clanking, popping sounds, and then I realize there is a line of cars stacking up behind us? All I can picture is the Shadow Cruiser breaking loose and wiping them all out in one big disastrous swoop. ( can you tell I suffer from a touch of an anxiety?) But back to these cars, where did they even come from?? I swear to you we were literally the only truck on the road prior to this hill, this absolutely stupid hill, and now there are a bunch of impatient folk wanting this big rig out of their way. Well, you’re gonna just have to hold on a precious minute.

We make it to the top, and Matt fairly easily finds a spot to turn around without any major road gymnastics. Now we have to ride our brakes back down said hill with 9k lbs of trailer behind us. Eeeek. I hope to be more comfortable with the hill situation by the time we get to CO. We make it back to the park entrance praying that the gate is still open for our extremely after-hours arrival. I do a little happy dance when I see that it is, in fact, still open. We are here!!! Hallelujah. We have a campsite in a campground!!! Remember the Mountain View Motel, roadside power thieving experience? That was somehow just LAST night. Henry has been passed out for about an hour at this point and Isabelle is crying about how tired she is, and Jack is just hollering. He’s hangry and ready to be out of the truck.

Now, when you arrive at a campground late and you can’t check in and get a map, and everything is dark and you have no clue where you are going…. you will ultimately look super lame. We are creeping through this dark, sleepy little campground, hopefully going unoticed… ya know, cruising the shadows…. or hoping at least that the screaming kids aren’t audible to the other residents. NOT LIKELY. We are trying to follow the spot numbers, but of course drive right by the loop that our site is on, and have to meander through the whole campground….circle around, and try again. Okay, found it, time to back her in. Matt and I are still really working out how to best communicate when it comes to parking the rig. We’ve come up with these really nifty ideas like using walkie talkies….. or getting a backup cam on the camper, but we haven’t put anything into practice yet. So basically I just yell to him from somewhere behind the camper, and 9 times out of 10 he can’t even here me. Mind you it’s pitch black, late, and quiet as a… well a forest… and basically we are disturbing the peace entirely at this point. When trying to direct him, I find myself hollering out all of these very odd things like “cut your butt in more” and “make your front left and back right“, “shove your shit over a little” “not those tires, the other ones”. Imagine listening to all that when you\re trying to fall asleep in a neighboring campsite. I know we will get better at it , but this is usually when the stress level is at its absolute peak. Screaming kids, barking dog, exhaustion, hunger, darkness….

We do get the rig all tucked in and hooked up when about 10 minutes later ole Donny, the campground host, shows up in his golf cart to see if he could be of any help..,..to ya know shine a light for us or something. You really are a doll Donny, but ya missed it on this one.

So I think this sweet, delicious moment with Jack was born from the fact that the bigs were just passed out. They required next to NOTHING to get them to bed….they were KO’d. Matt was still doing outside stuff, so I chugged a glass of wine and was ready to start about my setup chores….But here is Jack… all types of amped after his 5 o’clock nap and thrilled to be out of his car seat. He is trying to lead me to the bunkhouse and wants to play with the magnet/chalkboard that I have hung on their wall. His little hand is tugging on mine and his angelic voice is saying ”come mommy, come oooon mama” . It is the swift kick in the gut that I need to stop me in my tracks and realize that I have not REALLY connected with him in a while, and just sat down and done whatever it is his little heart desires at the moment of play. It is SO EASY to get lost in the logistics, distracted by stress, busy meeting everyone’s basic needs, going through the motions of the day, ticking the tasks off the list….even in this lifestyle……maybe even more so with this lifestyle until we dial in what we are doing a bit better.

I cast aside all the things my OCD is begging me to do, and I sit down with my baby and watch him put up different magnets and say what each fruit is in his sweet little toddler voice that I know is devastatingly temporary. He tries to write things on the chalk board first with his left hand, and then his right. He always draws “worms”. He wants me to draw with him and to spell his name with magnets and write out J.A.C.K with the chalk and he makes all these approving faces over what I’m doing and cheers me on as I have done for him so many times. Basically, he melts me… that’s his super power…. being so pure and innocent and genuine and kind, that he turns you into a gooey, sappy puddle on the floor. And in that moment, I’m really able to reflect and feel so grateful for him and his life and this precious moment in time. I am reminded that this is what I want more of. This is what I want out of this experience and life in general….more meaningful time and present moments spent with my children and husband. This is of course possible at home too, and there are plenty of these sweet moments there as well. But I want more. I want less distractions and less chores and less stuff and less commitments and more tuning in. And here I am only a week and a half in and I already feel like, for a few rough days, I had forgotten what and why we are on this journey. I must grow my power to balance the noise, stress, responsibility and stay with the moment.

I get him in his precious bear jammies and we cuddle up to read some books. We get “ka ka“ ( his lovey chameleon) and “bun bun” (his grey bunny) all snuggied in with him, one on either side and sharing his pillow)… and get his blanket pulled up under his chin just like he likes it. I lay with him and rub his back and then he rolls over to hold my head in his hands like he does every time I lay down with him. He smooches me all over my rapidly aging face, and tells me “love you too mama” and I tell him “I love you too Jack Jack”. And now I am going to bed knowing I’m the luckiest woman in the world, for sure. I can do the chores in the morning.

I wrote this one down the night it happened, and it finally fit the timeline to share. I will get back to more about the traveling in the next post.