We dropped off Kyle at Camp Lone Star yesterday for his first overnight camp experience. It's just a two-night excursion and a perfect warm-up to camp. It's a huge step for him. It was surreal and so inspiring to think of how far Kyle has come in three years. I've had people surprised when I tell them he's at camp. It makes me proud knowing my guy is at overnight camp with complete strangers, who now of course are his friends! Kyle has been away from us much longer than two nights before but always with family and that's quite different.
Couple things that were amusing to me as we prepped for camp. Saturday I was at Target and made a frantic call home to David asking him to start teaching Kyle to tie his shoelaces! We have a deadline of T-16 and 8 of those hours are sleeping hours! Yep, Kyle learned to tie his laces finally. He's been in Crocs since June and during the year, had velcro until the last month and we didn't bother to teach him just for May. We knew he needed to learn for 2nd grade so camp made us get on the ball! Nothing like a crash course...which leads me to my other amusing story to share.
You'd think as a trained Director of Christian Education, my kids would know every book of the Bible and have memorized key verses by age 4. Well, by age 7, Kyle is now a reader so as I looked at his packing list and saw he needed a Bible felt VERY embarassed that our Bibles range from infant bibles to the Concordia Self Study Bible with all its footnotes, high notes, back notes, key notes, and translations from here to Rome and back. He uses The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones which is AWESOME BY THE WAY. But in a flash, I panicked that my kid would be the one who coulnd't look up a verse in the Bible. So what did I do? The kid got a crash-course in using the real grown-up Bible. I am kicking myself because why in the world am I embarassed by this? He LOVES the Bible we've been using, which is a paraphrase, and while I've read from the "real" Bible with him, it gets too wordy for a kid his age, not to mention I can barely read it in the dim light of his room at bedtime (think I might need reading glasses). One time he wanted me to read the Noah story from Bible. Do you know how long that took? And don't even get me started on all the begats and begots...Yep, time to head to the Christian bookstore for that cool Adventures Bible for kids age 8-12 (I can even picture the cover). With the shoelacing taught and chapter and verse recognition taught crash-course style, we loaded him up. This poor kid probably thought camp was going to be one long bible verse hunting session with shoelace tying races in the evenings just for fun.
And my final prep took place on the way there. I had described how the bugspray worked which is a powder since I know he doesn't like creams and oily things and is afraid it'll get in his eyes. I asked him if he was excited about camp only to find out he was worried the bugs were going to bite him. I reassured him that he's been around biting bugs his entire life, that camp just had a few more in concentration. Sometimes prepping a kid just is too much stress on them. Next time I'll just hide in the bushes and spray when he's not expecting it. I prepped him for the headlice check next. Thus ensured a litany of questions about what if they forget to check someone? I finally just said that the lice-infested kid would infest his cabin and they'd all get to shave their heads. Yes, I'm a bit dramatic at times. David piped in and said that we couldn't control if they forgot to check a kid so we didn't need to worry about it. I now realize he was quite contemplative during check-in--he was probably trying to make sure each kid's head was inspected.
Our little guy isn't so little anymore now that he's been to camp. I'm incredibly proud of him. I love this kid like crazy and think about how far he's come. It's just nothing short of awesome for us to see him do this all on his own and not even realize I hadn't hugged him goodbye. By the time I realized it, he was already walking with his group to dinner. Proud moment.
And last night I did have a bit of trouble relaxing. I found myself (in my mind of course) looking down at earth and seeing our house in Hutto and then his tiny little 54 lb manself in his little bunkbed in his little cabin in La Grange. He felt very small then and very far away. David reminded me that my sister and brother-in-law were 15 minutes from him. But still, he felt so far away in those moments. I'm sure when I lie down again tonight, I'll picture him again that way. I get to see him tomorrow--I can't wait to hear about his time there. So for us, a two night adventure was probably as much as I could handle this year. Next year, maybe this Mama will be ready for the full week.
No comments:
Post a Comment