#trillium trailers

[tjtevlin]

A cool trailer at the campground! I believe it's a Trillium.

[mymishmash-blog]

Why I will not drive across the country with three children on my own

Last week, irritated with the mundane 9-5 life I was leading due to my husband’s (poor) work-life choices, I made a cocky Facebook post inquiring as to whether it would be a good idea to drive across Canada, with my three children, by myself. I am young. I am fit. I am independent. Look at me. And then we went camping (with my husband) and I realized, I am an idiot. 

We are now home, as clean as we get, with healthy food in our bellies and warm beds to sleep in. I am sheepishly basking in the delightful efficiency of my baby monitor, white noise machine and fully fenced yard. Please keep in mind we did bike across Cuba last year with our two children in trailers and 300 diapers strapped to our backs. I am not ‘that’ mom. But three kids is different. I am humbled. 

Here are five very good reasons why I am not driving across the country by myself. 

1) I will lose a child. Two adults+three kids+ no fence= lost child. Our friends happened to be camping at the same site as us and they also have three children (but much more appropriately spaced in age), and even with two adults and a responsible nine year old, they still lost one child. It was just an hour but what a hellish hour. Mom thought dad had her, dad thought mom had her, then they both thought she was with friends and then they thought she was with her sister. You get it. The cops were called. The Psychic was called (yes we were hippy dippy island camping) and finally the child was found...hiding on the beach amongst hundreds of sunbathers. Scary. 

2) They will injure themselves or each other. The reality is I will not be camping in the great outdoors. The reality is I will be camping in campsites, subdivisions of the great outdoors. I swear we used to go to campsites when I was a kid and were blown away with the space we had to run and the privacy from others. Have sites gotten smaller or has my awareness of others increased? There will be cars, animals, bodies of water, speeding bikes with stoned teenagers racing by... the realities of modern day camping. 

When I breastfeed the baby, my older children think of my as impaired. They  batter each other (and much harder than usual), they run at cliffs and cars and eat jagged chunks of glass. Seriously! They love to get a rise out of me and enjoy watching me grapple with the balance of feeding the already distracted baby and the fight to keep them safe. A week on the road on my own would not bode well to the safety of the older two.

3) We will be attacked by animals. We chose to camp on an island two ferries away from the mainland with no predators for one very good reason. There is no possible way of managing to combat the constant food mess that follows my children. Even baby vomit (which is constant in this house) occurs two to three times an hour. I am sure bears would eat baby vomit. 

4) No one sleeps. Three young kids with three very different schedules. One naps twice a day. One naps once a day. And one does not nap at all. They all hate sleep and can't bear to miss anything so it is a battle to wrestle them to sleep before the others. Nor will they lie beside each other and nicely drift off to sleep. They will wrestle and giggle and fight until the sun rises. I tried everything this trip. We even let them stay up till 10:30 because even if I could get my children to be quiet I couldn't silence the other children of the campsite....the hundreds of them who seemed to be attracted to our site like wasps on baby vomit (they love it!) But unlike those free range kids who lay down at 10:30 and dozed till 9, mine were up at 5 raging at they’re own exhaustion. Sleep begets sleep. And no sleep begets no sleep. 

5) Its just not fun. And here is the kicker. I wanted to drive across the country with all three kids on my own because I thought there could be some fun to be had. But the reality is I would end up gritting my teeth and scrambling and swearing all week long. I would drive into head on traffic in an exhausted daze or I would lose a child while I turned to change a diaper. But we would not be wandering through the forest looking at bugs, nor would we be having a campfire until the wee hours (FIRE BAN), nor would we be sleeping. Even with two adults I did not find time to read a single chapter of my book... (I stubbornly dragged it from beach to campsite, even tried to read in the car while the children begged to play I spy) It was all work. 

I paint a very dreadful picture, in good humour of course. It was not absolutely terrible. It was just exhausting and less fun than our usual camping trips. They have always been busy trips but this time there was always someone who was exhausted, unhappy or missing out. I realized quickly that, as parents, our role was to ensure the children had the time of their lives. I didn’t bother them with the details of how much work we were doing, of how exhausted we were, of how much we just wanted five minutes of peace on our own. The joy of camping now rests in them. The look on their faces while they watched the fiery orange moon rise above the pastures filled with dancing festival go-ers. The piercing determination while they searched for crabs, sand dollars and horrendous silverfish. And they’re mud-crusted and sun-bathed faces rolling around the tent after each long, hard day. Those are the adorable moments I am supposed to say make it all worthwhile. But seriously, I will not be driving across the country on my lonesome.