So, it may have been mentioned on this blog before, but I was really, REALLY terrified of my summer. Somewhere about mid May I realized that what I thought I would be doing with my summer -- sending Joseph, 6, and Hannah, 3, off to camp every day -- was not to be. I was, gulp, actually going to be a mother of three once and for all.
Yes, I know I have had three children since mid October, but I only really had to deal with them all at one time and all by myself between the hours of 4 and 6 p.m. Yes, it's the "witching hour," but if I got desperate there was always TV, right?
So, I'm pleased to report that Summer has been WAAAAAY better than feared. Camp Wolff has been, for the most part, a success. Here are some pictures to prove it:
Camp Wolff kicked off at the beach in Delaware (Thanks, Liz!). Joseph and Hannah were alternately either camera shy or sporting terrible-cheesy camera smiles, so this is as close to a picture of them enjoying the beach as I could come. It was really a little pool of water left over from high tide. Hannah is not so much a fan of waves, so she didn't go near the coast line.
Miriam, bless her, will sleep anywhere:
I'm pretty sure Camp Wolff would be a dismal failure if we had to arrange everything around an infant's nap schedule. She does this at the pool, too, so I just park a chair over her so no children step on her, and there's usually some nice woman who will flag me down if she wakes up while I'm in the shallow end of the big pool with the other two. It really does take a village!
I think my all-time-favorite Camp Wolff activity was hiking the waterfall right here in the reservation. I can't believe it has taken me this long to find it:
I was disappointed when I saw that the waterfall was more a trickle, but it allowed for a day of hiking up the stream bed, scrambling over rocks and getting very, very wet.
Hannah experimented with how much water a pull-up would hold before exploding. Warning: It becomes very hard to "leave no trace" when you have to scoop and scrape reactant polymerized gel out of a child's pants, off wet rocks ... I did my best, and next time, really, I'll just let her pee on herself if that's what she chooses to do.
Camp Wolff road tripped to Graves Mountain Lodge in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We went with Grandmother and cousins Ben and Garland. It was such a lovely time, and I learned the beauty of included meals. How Mom and I would have managed to cook for, feed, and clean up after five children is beyond me. As it was, we would just have finished cutting meat for the last child when someone (usually Hannah or Garland) said, "Can I have some more ...? By the end of our stay we smartened up and would let them take themselves outside to run around on the hill while we finished our dinner.
Here's a picture of the lodge:
Meals were served on the top floor overlooking the hill. Our beautiful little cabin was just out of the frame of the picture on the bottom left. Mom and I are trying to convince the whole family that this is where we should go for vacation next year.
We also had a visit with Ashley-Aunt, Uncle Jim and Cousin Max. Jim ran the NYC Triathlon. Very impressive.
The kids played outside in the sprinkler:
That's Max. And here are Joe and Hannah:
This week has been a little slow. Swimming lessons got washed out twice, but we still went to the pool a couple times. Joseph's swimming has improved at such a ridiculous rate. He went from not even putting his face in, to swimming under the water -- you know, in that super-cute wiggly way kids do -- in the span of just a couple days. I pat myself on the back for coming up with the genius idea of throwing money in and letting him keep any he collected until he had enough to buy a Sponge Bob ice cream. I think they're gross, but it was the incentive he needed to work up the courage to go under.
Now he's working on proper arm movements, jelly fish floats (apparently they think calling it "The Dead Man Float" may be scary. Whatever.). It's very funny to see him jump off the side, pick up his knees and yell "Cannon Ball" as he's splashing into the water.
Hannah's still not close to swimming. But once she traded her brand new, never-been-worn boring old yellow goggles for a pair of "Princess Cinderella" ones she found in the Graves Mountain Lodge lost and found, she's been getting braver and braver about putting her face in. I'm hoping that by the end of Camp Wolff, she'll be wiggle butting her way across the shallow end, too.
I probably shouldn't put this in print for fear of jinxing myself, but at this rate I'd be willing to do this Camp Wolff thing again. I know, I know, there is still another whole month before school starts and a whole year before next summer, but it's really been kind of fun! Fingers crossed it stays that way.
