Urban Mama

Time Out For Camping

After a February trip to Disney World, our vacation fund is pretty much tapped out, so we've decided to go car camping more often. I know that to some of you that sounds about as fun as picking the lint out of your belly button, but I'm a family camping convert. We haven't mastered cooking with a cast-iron dutch oven or figured out how to use a pie iron for more than grilled cheese, but we have had two lovely weekend camping trips so far, and plan to go on at least a couple more before the end of the summer. So far, we've been to Deep Creek Lake State Park(pictured, with our palatial REI Kingdom 6 tent) and to Little Bennett Regional Park, both in Maryland.

Highlights from our back-to-back trips to the great outdoors include watching the kids make s'mores, enjoying our good friend Dave's campfire lattes, using iPhones to look up lyrics to Broadway hits (so we could have a proper sing-along), catching up with Jen, letting the husbands cook (I highly recommend marrying a man who's an amazing outdoor chef), and allowing the kids to catch, stare at and then release a lovely spider we later realized was a black widow (who knew?!).

Mami certainly didn't raise me to appreciate camping. Her idea of camping was staying somewhere without a full restaurant. It's not that she was a snob who only stayed at the Ritz (no offense to those of you privileged enough to stay at 5-star hotels on all your vacations), she just wouldn't have wanted to dress down, sleep in a tent, and sweat/get dirty unnecessarily. I, however, roll up a bandanna, cover up the frizz, wear lounge pants and plain T-shirts, and just kick back on a camp chair. There's something pretty magical about unplugging (OK, except for the iPhones) and just hanging out with your family and friends.

I know that before I was born, Mami and my father took my siblings to cabins in the Catskills with a half-dozen other Colombian families in their circle of friends. There's even video footage of those vacations, where my mom is shown looking like one hot mama in a black one-piece, lounging by a pool. I wish those trips were part of my history too, but I grew up with Widowed/Remarried Mami, not Married-to-Papi Mami. Oh what I wouldn't give to see my mom in a cabin!

So to all of my girlfriends out there who think they're too princessy to enjoy camping -- try family camping. It's not at all as difficult as backpacking, and your family *will* love it. You will too.

Pixar's Marital Advice

One of the things I loved most about UP was its opening sequence chronicling the friendship, romance, and marriage of Carl and Ellie. In just a few minutes Pixar's latest animated film captured the essence, the intimacy, the dreams deferred but not forgotten, of a long and loving marriage. Most of the sequence is wordless, and I couldn't hold back the tears by the end of it.

My husband and I were also best friends first. He was not my Edward*, my obsession-at-first-sight. He was my Ron, my Harry, my close-and-then-best friend I went to cafes, movies, plays, restaurants with all.of.the.time. When our romantic relationship finally began my sophomore year in college, we already knew all the secret-handshake stuff about each other -- like the fact my husband recoils from the film adaptation of Cabaret, because creepy Joel Grey in full-on Weimar costume and make-up freaked him out as a kid. (That's about all I can share without being considered a turncoat). 

In UP, life (mostly bills and other mundanities) gets in the way of Carl and Ellie's lifelong dream to visit remote Paradise Falls together. In my marriage, our own bills multiplied by our three loved-but-unexpected children have made it difficult for us to fulfill some of our dreams, to go on certain adventures (say, traveling extensively), but in the meantime, like Carl eventually realizes, we have had so many other adventures together. And no matter how long it takes, we'll make it to Paradise Falls one day. I know we will.

*Yeah, I read the Twilight books

A Pox On Our House

Our oldest son has a case of breakthrough chicken pox. I knew there was a small (10-15%) chance he could still get it despite the vaccination, but I didn't imagine he would contract it, much less during the penultimate week of first grade. Of course, knowing our family's history with odds and percentages (we're the couple that conceived three babies while using three different forms of birth control), perhaps I should have expected E to get chicken pox.

On the bright side, post-vaccination cases are milder than regular cases. E doesn't have any pockmarks on his face and isn't scratching wildly the way I remember from my own case when I was 12. He's still fairly miserable, but he's not nearly as hysterical his mama was as a tween. I got mine nearly exactly 20 years ago, the summer after 7th grade, and was doomed to spend 10 days stuck in my house -- a real prison sentence for any Florida kid who'd rather be pool-party-hopping.

I allowed E to konk out in my bed. We watched Shrek The Third together and then he drifted off into a four-hour, Benadryl-induced deep sleep. Watching him sleep (yes, that's him in the picture but he was only four then), I remembered that Mami let me stay in her room too, mostly because I had to stay away from my beloved grandmother, who was dying of pancreatic that summer in her own room across the house. It was pretty traumatic for me.

I'm thankful that E's chicken pox doesn't seem nearly as upsetting as mine was, and even though he's missing all but the last two days of first grade, I am determined to make the best of our in-home seclusion. I just PRAY that baby J is spared, because THAT would be traumatic.

Wish us luck, friends. But don't stop by unless you're willing to be exposed to the pox.