We just came off our one and only camping trip of the season.
Your Mom and I have been intimidated by the idea of camping with you and Eliza most of the summer and cancelled a trip to the San Juans, planned in the naivete of last winter. Because sleeping in our home has been so inconsistent, we’ve felt assured that sleep would be non-existent in the confines and excitement of a tent.
The camping wasn’t glamorous but wasn’t bad either, simply functional. We stayed at a property outside of Arlington to crash before your cousin Winnie’s first birthday party the next day in La Conner. You and Eliza actually slept OK. We were disarmed, however, by fireworks after dark that threw Greta into a shaky mess. We gave her some now-legal animal CBD to help calm her down but lost an hour of sleep between events.
We dodged most potential camp site dangers — poison oak, s’more stick pokes, campfire burns — but couldn’t escape a freak camp chair accident that almost took out your right eye. While I was getting the camp stove going I heard a bloody scream from directly behind me. When I turned, I saw you holding your eye and saw the frame of the camp chair and s’more sticks. I immediately assumed you poked your eye with stick. Not good. After you calmed down I took a closer look at your eye and was relieved to see it was fine. But your eyelid… It had two sharp cuts. I couldn’t figure it out. Your Mom took a look, checked back at the evidence and resolved that you somehow pinched your eyelid between the camp chair frame pieces, held together by elastic bungee cord. I still can’t figure out how you accomplished that. The physics don’t work out.
This is par for course though. We’ve sent Eliza and then you to the emergency room the previous two successive weeks. Eliza earned the trip from pulling a large shoe rack down on her ankle. It looked obliterated by the color and swelling but fortunately nothing was broken and she came back from the hospital with a stuffed cat. That was one expensive stuffed cat.
You earned the trip after falling on your face out on the back patio and putting a nail-head-size hole in your forehead. The doctor didn’t need to put a suture in but used a steri-strip to do the job. You also took a good shot to the nose but didn’t break it. The scab looked like you had a constant bloody nose, which would have worked out great if it happened closer to Halloween to pull off an authentic version of Eleven from Stranger Things.
So now you’ve got a purple eye and fast-healing scabs on your forehead and nose. You’re the definition of an accident-prone, two-year-old boy. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Love, Dad