Camping and [Not] Resting

Owen took a nice nap one day over Labor Day weekend, so we prepared for our mommy/son campout (these days when Owen catches a nap, he is up til 9pm+, so a nap was going to be essential so I didn't have to go to bed with him in broad daylight in a tent at 6:30)!  The excitement was palpable!

We had campfire with the neighbors, hot dogs, smores and all.  Asher went to bed.  We got our books, our lanterns, our sleeping bags, topped up the air mattress and settled in for the night.  Don't forget extra socks and sweatshirts just in case (overnight temp 49F).

Oh, we had such fun snuggling and reading and telling stories and looking up at the stars.  Then, it was bedtime; we were both tired.  Well, a tent and a mommy beside him were just too much for little O.  He wouldn't lay down, and just kept saying, 'Mommy, I fink we need to go sweep in our bed now.'  I tried many a turn of logic, a few appeals and lots of assurances of what fun it would be to stay in the tent.  Nope.  He would not be budged!  Inside it was.  Maybe next year we'll make it til morning ;)

In the meantime, the tent is was great fun as a playspace last week!

Well, nap time is almost nonexistent for Owen these days, but we do have an enforced rest time.  Whoa, has it been a struggle...Owen doesn't relish being left in his room for an hour and a quarter with only books and a few toys.  This week he got smart.  Suddenly he stopped resisting me (well, not nearly as much) and in place of intermittent whining and clunking around, all I hear is complete silence.  Any mom knows that the absence of sound is the presence of trouble.  He is no longer in the field of my video monitor.  I contemplate...to stop whatever mischief he's executing, or to relish a quiet, whine-less hour to myself, and to let him self-soothe and solve his boredom problem by finding something to do that excites him.  I pick the latter.  The result is that he has basically trashed his room every day this week.  I haven't figured out what to do about this exactly.  I've been hesitant to provide him interesting rest time activities in the past, because I actually hold on to the hope he might catch a nap if not overstimulated (which I really must give up on at this point)...so perhaps I need to start providing some non-room-trashing alternatives to keep him resting and in his room.  That said, it has been hilarious to see what he's come up with.  Yesterday I walked in to a very bright eyed and excited child who said with all sincerity, 'MOMMY!  I climbed up on TOP of my dresser!  Aren't you proud of me that I could do that??!'  This is about a 4.5 ft. high dresser.  Today...

Read:  I am very proud of myself that I have removed every object from every closet in my room, and I am wearing entirely different clothes than I had on at the start of this little session!

What better use for a bag of polyfil pillow stuffing?  Pull it out of the bag and onto the changing table in imagination-filled play in which stuffed bears eat it!  Owen has a bear (the Baylor-colored bear that mommo sewed for Asher) that he is mommying as well as any 3 year old girl these days.  The bear gets baths, eats pillow stuffing, and Owen wraps him in a blanket and sings ABCs to him before laying him down for naps in a portable file box and putting a kitchen towel over him for a blanket.  When Owen found the bag of pillow stuffing, he brought it to me and said, "Mommy, I know what these letters on this bag say.  They say:  Bears are allowed to eat this fluff."

I wondered how the music coming over the monitor kept changing.  I was afraid to find out.  When I walked in, it became clear.

Granted, taking pictures of all of this does not send the message that the vandalism is frowned-upon, and may egg him on a bit.  But I couldn't help myself.  Won't I cherish the picture someday far more than one day's effort to curb such cuteness?  He did, however, have to clean every bit of it up, which he was not excited about :}