In 2009, when Nathan was two, he went to Junior Explorers camp. It was only two days a week, 90 minutes each day. I can't imagine it's easy to be a counselor at a camp for two-year-olds, since two-year-olds are not so much campers as they are irrational incoherent blobs. So, I can't really evaluate how well camp went that year. Nathan cried the first day, but after that he was fine. I would drop him off, frantically run errands or clean, and pick him up with a bunch of new Oriental Trading Company crafts that the counselors mostly did for him.
Here's a picture of Nathan on the first day of camp in 2009:
By 2010 he had graduated to Camp Fantastic. The look on his face in this photo from the first day of camp 2010 pretty much sums up our Camp Fantastic experience that year.
Camp in 2010 was not, in fact, fantastic. For several days Nathan refused to do the craft at camp. I wasn't sure if this constituted A Problem or not. But I didn't have time to solve that one because then the next Problem came: he was peeing on the floor every day at camp. He was far enough in his potty training that he could tell the teachers he had to go to the bathroom, but he never got there quite in time and would pee on the floor. On the third day of finding him in his spare outfit, the counselor told me that the peeing was becoming a problem. I asked her if she wanted us to drop out of camp, and she said no, we would just keep an eye on it. I felt pretty confused as to how *we* were supposed to keep an eye on the problem when *I* was not, in fact, there the whole morning. With the bribe of the big camp field trip to Dairy Queen on the horizon, Nathan got through two whole days without peeing, at which point the camp session was over and we didn't sign up for any more sessions.
Given our lackluster camp experience last year, I hesitated to sign Nathan up for camp this year. But with school out, he needed some structure. And I know some parents believe that kids need a lack of structure in the summer. I want to agree with those people. I think it is good for kids to have some downtime, but with me not having any type of job and Nathan not really doing a lot of other activities this summer, I knew he needed to do something.
Camp was not that ideal something--I would prefer an activity that just met two or three days a week--but it's reasonably-priced and really close by. So, here we are, going to camp again. Right now he's signed up for the noon dismissal, rather than the 2:00 dismissal where he would eat lunch there and do some afternoon activities. I think the noon dismissal is going to allow us a good balance between structured and unstructured time, but if Nathan suddenly expresses some great interest in staying until 2:00, I won't have a problem signing him up.
And I don't know how many weeks we'll be going to camp. We're playing it by ear.
Here's Nathan this morning on his first day of Camp Fantastic 2011:
And so far, knock on wood, camp has been drama-free. Drop-off was fine. When I showed up at pick-up he had a completed craft and a good behavior report.
Having brought some structure back into our lives, I felt great this afternoon. I liked how camp gave us a deadline to get out of the house, which forced me to do my morning chores in the morning instead of leaving them until the afternoon. I had time to go to my Weight Watchers meeting by myself, and then to visit Trainer Jill. Then in the afternoon it felt nice to have some free time where Nathan played and I did some stuff around the house.
I think the transition was a little harder for Nathan, who was crabby and overwhelmed by 4:00. Once again I'm struggling a bit with how to keep the afternoons from dragging, and to come up with an activity that is constructive without being additionally taxing on already-overstimulated Nathan.
I guess my realization right now is that we need to acknowledge that each new activity comes with a bit of a challenging transition period, and I shouldn't allow myself to get frustrated until I've let that transition period pass. Which also means that if we're going to go through all the work of transitioning, we have to stick with camp for at least a few weeks. Even if Nathan did say, "There's camp again tomorrow?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
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