Get Camping

There are so many beautiful places to camp near Santa Barbara, and it's not as hard to pull it off as you might think. I didn't camp for years after having Isla, thinking it would be too difficult without Ryan, who was busy working and building our business. Now that the girls are 4 and 2, I've taken them twice, without the hardworking hubby, and both trips were surprisingly easy.

Our most recent trip was to Big Sur, which was an easy 3 hour car trip away (ok, maybe 3.5 hours since we had to stop 4 times to go potty!) We stayed at Plaskett Creek, on the Southern side of Big Sur.


It was a great spot, with lots of room for the kids to run and climb:



...and a very short walk to the bluffs and beach:





Because we were only staying one night, and setting up/taking down a tent seemed like a lot of work to me, we camped in the Prius!



We didn't bring a stove, (which we will be sure to bring next time!) so I just brought a cooler and a big basket of easy food like fruit, yogurt, nut butter, rice cakes, corn cakes, gluten-free pizza, prepared gluten-free pasta, prepared oatmeal and agave, prepared rice and beans, cold chai for me, coconut water, salami and turkey for my carnivorous children, avocados, lots of veggies like carrots and zucchini, etc. I will admit, we met some of our dear mamatoto friends there, and Emma made us a gourmet dinner that night, but we arguably would have survived without it...

We left home at 6am, arrived by 9:30, played all day, ate Emma's homemade gluten-free s'mores around a campfire, slept in the car, packed up, and headed home around 11. Both girls were happily exhausted and slept the whole way home, so we made it back by 2. An entire vacation in 31 hours. Success!

Potty Training Camping Weekend

With all of the babies either two or nearly two, my mamatoto group thought it might be a good idea to try out potty training. We thought somewhere out in nature would be best, where it was warm and they could run around diaper-free for a few days. We camped at the Paradise Campgrounds at Red Rock, and there were nine babies in all, although some just made it for one day or another. The idea was that the babies would see each other using the potty and that we, the parents, would have the support of the other mamas and daddies in the group.

I wasn't sure Isla was ready. Actually, I was pretty sure she wasn't, but I thought it would be a fun camping trip either way. We gathered up our camping gear. I tried on my down jacket ahead of time to make sure it fit over my enormous pregnant belly, and grabbed Isla's potty along with her potty baby and her potty. Luckily husband Ryan is a great camper. He got everything else together first thing Friday morning and we were at the campgrounds by two.

It turned out that Isla had very little interest in being potty trained. We had a lot of poop on the floor, and ended up back in diapers for the last day and a half. I wanted to be careful she didn't feel pressured, and the group did a good job of keeping it fun for the babies. We had potties everywhere, and when a baby went pee or poop in one, we sang a song and did a dance about it. Besides that, we went to the river every day and cooked dinner together every night.

The camping trip was such a success that there are plans for it to be an annual event, and I am already looking forward to next year... with TWO babies!