Mama rocks a mumu

My kids love to swim. This stinks for me-- I hate heat and swimsuits. To deal with this dilemma, I enrolled the kids in lessons as soon as they could walk hoping to shave years off the total time I would be required to be in the pool with them. God has blessed me with children who can swim, but I still have to be there. To deal with this, I bought a swimsuit cover-up the other day. As long as I have a cover-up, the suit will last for years and I avoid swimsuit shopping. Swimsuit shopping should only be done once every 15 years if you play your cards right (more frequently to compensate for major weight loss, weight gain, or unsightly worn patches in inconvient places -which of course, isn't a big deal if you have a cover-up). But cover-up shopping is much more fun and much less stressful. Really, swimsuits are just so...small. One hasn't been invented that covers the mid-thigh vericose veins or the legs that didn't get premiere shave time. So until tea-length swim skirts are in and functional, the old suit stays (it has another three years to go). When the debut of the latest cover-up occurred, I was told I rocked the mumu. Well, thanks. I think. Or not. I don't equate mumus and "rocking" but oh well. Summer is short and rocking it or not, the mumu is my ticket to survival. Make way for mama!

We're still camping

Summer is here and for the first time since an abandoned water-logged tent in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin while nursing a newborn, we have decided to see if we still like to camp in a tent. Before kids, we did it a lot and really liked it. I'll be the first to admit I am a fair-weather camper. Major mosquitoes, humidity and heat and continual rain will send me packing, but when it's nice (you know, on those three days of summer where conditions are perfect), I am all for it. With little ones, I found my desire lessened. Anything that ends up feeling like more work than fun should be abandoned if it is supposed to be relaxing. But after the pain faded, there was one other attempt after Benjamin arrived but that, too, ended in bailing in the middle of the night during a down pour. Those combined experiences left me quite sour on the whole thing. But there was the pull to camp, still, so we decided to rent a pop-up and that worked. But...parents are silly. They get nostalgic for things they either did as a kid or always wanted to do and that's why it still seemed like a good idea to try the tent again. When we set up the tent in the yard and the kids go crazy. Soon half the house is in the tent and my kids are happy as can be. Surely this translates to- we want to camp! So...in a grand experiment of travelling light, we even managed to pack and travel on this latest venture in our small car. And survived. Despite rain every day, we had a great time. Lucy decided cooking was fun on a camp stove outdoors so I did none of it, Ben legally played with fire every day, and there wasn't a screen to watch anywhere. Other than some minor heart failure while watching my babies climb on water-covered rocks that seemed a little too close to a large cold lake, pulling a leech off the girl, and bandaging my boy's knees (twice) there were no accidents and the bugs stayed far away from us.

Home again, the kids still think we're camping. They liked being piled into the tent close together so the sleeping bags have migrated to our bedroom. Most night at least one of them will wake up at some odd hour and get snuggled in trying to re-gain that feeling of closeness. It's sweet, but I like my bed and I am not joining them on the floor. That will have to wait for the next adventure.