Things I forgot about camping

We went camping recently. All 12 of us, sleeping in a tent. Here is what I had forgotten about camping but have since remembered:

There is no 3 second rule with camping. You cannot quickly pick up a dropped s'more and eat it because it is covered with dirt and pine needles.

The migration patterns of small children sleeping on a flat surface (i.e. the ground in a tent) means that even if there is room for everyone when you go to sleep, someone will wake up with a foot or elbow in the gut, or mouth, or um, wherever, before the night is out.

Camping when pregnant works better when you are in a camper with a toilet. Taking a 10 minute round trip walk several times in the middle of the night does not make for a well rested mommy, even if the view of the stars through a pine tree canopy is great compensation.

The toilets at the john at the campground we go to flush automatically whenever you move enough to scratch a mosquito bite.

Cooking by committee for 27 or so campers while keeping food on three different locations and without running water except for what you have to walk to get is, well, a challenge.

Rain is like steroids for laundry - it radically speeds up the process so you can go through three days of laundry in a matter of hours.

The dirt. The baby looks so dirty, she might be mistaken for a chimney sweep (good luck will rub off . . . ).

Toddlers want to play in the street. Maybe it's the big kids zipping by on their bicycles, maybe it's the water spigot within visibility with the delightful puddle around it, maybe it's that pine needles don't feel as good to bare feet as pavement - they are drawn to the road like mosquitoes are drawn to my ankles and babies' foreheads (one child looked like his head was square from 20 bites, the other resembled a Clingon, with a row of bites right down the middle of her forehead).

The 3 year old doesn't actually need to pedal, he can go almost as fast as big kids with training wheels, per the Fred Flintstone method.

Things we forgot: all our lists, forks, and to put a pullup on the 3 year old before driving through the night.

Things we remembered: the joy children experience digging a hole in the ground, how good everything tastes when you're really hungry, how tired everyone gets playing at the beach, how sand gets EVERYWHERE, how much fun it is to play in the same waves on the same beach with your children that delighted you when you were their age.