Camping!

Those of you who've known me a long time know that I have really wanted to take Dominic camping for years and have not had a way that I felt safe doing it.  Between his nocturnal wakeups and wandering and my hearing loss... well... its hard to lock a tent.

Enter a solid group of friends who loves to camp and a cheap camper I bought in January.   They promised they'd help me keep eyes on him so that I could also do some relaxing. And they did.  We had success!!   Dominic and I went camping with another 5 people over Memorial day and he loved it.  He was in constant motion all day every day - by the river, playing with the dog, etc.  Huge win. 

Couple of things of note...:

- There was nearly no scripting movie scenes the entire time.  I chose to not bring any tech he could escape into (there was no signal anyway, all I used my phone for was the camera) and he got to spend the whole time in the fresh air and sunshine.  I think it was the combination of not having a screen in front of him to script from and the being outside.  My takeaway is I need to get us organized to start hiking regularly again. 

- I think he ate less.  Oddly enough.  And while he ADORED the making of the smore, the whole eating it part wasn't his cup of tea.  In fact he told me "ew, gross"

- I bought him a whistle to wear around his neck, for 2 reasons - the first being that if you get lost in the woods, you can whistle a hellova lot longer than you can scream and the second is, it'll scare away bears.  So Dominic somehow went from "this is a whistle you blow IF you see a bear" to "this is a whistle you blow TO see a bear" and was running around saying "call the bear, call the bear", which was hilarious.

- He did remarkably well with the disgusting and echo-ey vault toilet. 

And - he was so tired from the whole running around and being in fresh air that he slept hard - with his friends dog - and didn't wander.  So we have success in camping.