better when we're together.

It would help if you sort of hummed a Jack Johnson song to yourself while you read this post. Me, Nate, Claire, Monk and Jack Johnson went on a (very tiny) campout this weekend. Jack has gone with us on every driving trip of Claire's life since she was four months old. Car trips during those first four months were HORRIBLE. She would cry and scream and freak out for miles. As a new mom, unaccustomed to the wailing of a wee one, I would pull over the car and hold her, nurse her, sing to her, give her toys. Nothing worked. I even gave up driving for a short time and would walk everywhere to avoid her sobs. While my thighs thanked me for this effort, this city doesn't have great public transportation and the walking wasn't fun when it wasn't by choice.

A friend suggested playing Jack Johnson in the car for Claire. He had worked for her son. I was skeptical, but this was an easy fix. I already had that yellow CD. I'm telling you, this guy is the Pied Piper of babies. From the first guitar strum, Claire chills out like a champ. This has worked for well over a year with 100% effectiveness. The only problem is that I've been sitting, waiting, wishing that I could get something else into my head for close to a year now. This week, I bought a new (old) Jack Johnson CD. Amazingly, it has the same effect as the trusty yellow one, but gives this mama a break from those delicious banana pancakes.
We secured Jack by rigging up a boombox in the back of our camper bus, and headed into the mountains. Our first family campout was short, but was a ton of fun. We went for a walk and on the way back to our campsite, were drenched by an almost tropical downpour that wouldn't stop. Hot and sticky from our hike, the rain felt awesome and Clare laughed in the ergo carrier the whole time. When we got back to our (drenched) campsite, we changed, loaded up our drenched belongings and headed home. Our gameplan had been to put Claire to sleep in the bus and hang out by the fire together for a few hours before joining her. "Hang out by the campfire" suddenly became "sit quietly in the bus while Claire fights to stay awake and probably throws things at us." Braver parents might have attempted to stay, but we are not those parents.
Since this fortunate fool has been sitting here for much too long trying to incorporate "no prints can come from fingers if machines become our hands" and "sepiatone loving" into an already too long post, I will hit "publish" before the girl wakes up from her nap. Maybe this is how it's supposed to be.