Camp Orkila and other extreme sports

We went to Orcas Island over Mother's Day weekend to stay at Camp Orkila with a school group. We had never been there before and elected to stay in the heated "condo" style accomodation to give us a little privacy and comfort with Wren. The weekend was lots of fun (and food) but I have come home feeling like I need to be checked into a Day Spa for the Real Mother's Day.

However, lest I sound overly gloomy - everyone had a lot of fun on the Giant Swing. It was a swing made of cables into which the swinger was clipped from a climbing harness. Frost and Josh were hauled up into the heights of the forest together and plummeted down when Josh released the catch. During the first two swings Frost apparently told Josh that he was getting "plane sick" and was "going to throw up". Josh said he talked him down and by swing #3 Frost was shouting that it was so cool he wanted to swing for 10 years. They were both flushed with adrenaline afterwards.


Frost loved the smores by the fire and playing in the little orchard or meadown around the main firepit area. He was less interested in organized activities and meals than I had expected. Next year we will bring a baby jogger so I don't have to carry Wren all day, a pair of walkie-talkies so I can keep track of Frost and perhaps a Golf Cart so I can actually relax a bit and make it up and back from the farm in time for lunch.


Wren slept okay the first night but had lots of trouble the second night. I was up at 5.30am creeping around and making decaf coffee. Later, I took a walk across the paddock before the sun made it over the rim of the forest and it reminded me very strongly of walks I have taken in the Natal highlands - that pastoral feeling with the blush-pink light and the air full of birdsong. There were red-winged blackbirds living in the bullrushes around the pond trying to woo their brown-winged mates and the sky had that thin haze of a clear day before the heat has built. Even the way the path swayed slightly as it wound across the paddock made me feel an ache of happy sadness - the feeling that you want to capture this moment and set it in some way that can be revisited endlessly. I talked to Frost about wanting to share walks with him sometime and he said that I must have been happy to SEE the birds and HEAR the birds but I couldn't SMELL the birds.

On the way back to Seattle, after Wren had yelled for about 30 minutes in a state of exhaustion, we pulled into a rest stop and swung him in his carseat until he fell asleep. I came up with the concept of the Parents' Olympics which would feature such extreme activities as:

• The running carseat insertion manoevre in which the parent is required to swing the baby to sleep in a 30+lb containment device and then run alongside a moving car and insert said device into the clasp without stopping the car and thus waking the baby from its eggshell sleep.


• The Baby Iditarod in which a parent is mushed by child and infant which it tows around through rugged terrain while trying to yelp encouragment and enthusiasm along the way.


• The Baby Carrier Contortion Move where the parent must follow complex instructions that appear to have been translated by someone who is not a native speaker to put on a device which could seriously harm their infant if assembled incorrectly. Acting on faith and instinct the parent must then insert the infant, put them to sleep, perform housework and then shift the infant from front to rear carry. Points are lost for dropping infant or waking infant or swearing at carrier. Bonus points are awarded for a serene attached demeanour and loving glances to infants fuzzy head


• Baby Relay where parents pass the infant back and forth without waking it. As in "will you hold him a moment?" "okay" "argh, can you get your hand out from under his head?" "no" "okay, how about..."

So, its good to be home. I have that feeling I remember as a child of loving hiking in the Berg and of being smoky and having bathed in rivers and slept in caves but loving KFC even more afterwards. Of really appreciating the fact of a fridge or, in this case, of being able to set Wren down on the couch and put my feet up and be digital and not have to nurse Wren all night to keep him from waking anyone.

Today its all business. Frost is mastering Level 7 and side quests in Super Paper Mario. He is on a time quota and can't believe I count screen time as including time repeating steps when he died the first time. I am putting garbage out, putting out all the masses of yard waste Dad generated while weeding our garden, mopping the kitchen, doing a week's laundry and generally catching up on the duties of a domestic goddess.

Tomorrow, Frost is going to have his teeth seen again because he has a strange sharp lump on one tooth since his sealants last week. In the afternoon I will be lying on the couch waiting for the Cable Guy to come and fix our dish which seems to have pulled loose from the roof and is generating a frustrating amount of black screen "no signal" time.

On top of all the usual... the sun is here and I can smell summer in the air along with the blooming and growing of flowers and weeds in abundance. I still haven't confirmed Frost in any full day camps and really need to get him in somewhere soon. We have a half-day school-based one and a Stone Soup Theatre performance but I was thinking of one week of doing something else.

Wren turned 5 MONTHS old on Sunday (Mother's Day) and I will post an update about him soon.

For me, mothers day began at about 9.15pm when I dunked my feet into a bath of hot parrafin wax and then wrapped them in plastic and lay back on the couch in my pajamas to watch half an episode of CSI. Bliss. Wren slept till midnight which was sweet too.