Practice camping trip

We had a practice camping trip last weekend, mainly to check that everything will fit in the car and that camping with three small boys isn't too horrendous ahead of a week long trip in the summer holidays! We went last summer when A was 6 weeks old but that was with one side of my family so there was a lot of help at hand.

Things that I learnt:

- there will not be much sleep. I had braced myself for this but was secretly hoping I would be pleasantly surprised - I was not! We didn't put the bigger two to bed until 9pm but it still took them a good while to settle, particularly on the first night. And A is having another phase of early waking so we were up at 4.45am on Saturday morning and knocking on the door of the local shop when it opened at 6am. They are shattered this week though - when we go away for a longer trip I don't think they will be able to sustain themselves on 8 or 9 hours sleep a night; we will have to brace ourselves for an implosion on day 3 or 4.

- think about the sun when pitching the tent. We're unlikely to have such amazing weather again but, if we do, we could do with a bit more shade in the middle of the day. We ended up putting A's highchair right in the corner of the porch and rigging up some towels over the front to try to keep him in the shade while he ate.

- the bag of toys worked well, I just have to accept that T is going to empty them all across the floor of the tent at least three times a day. I made a couple of travel tins, one with dinosaurs and one with Lego, which were surprisingly successful. I think it helps having toys that they haven't seen before or at least for a while. The pens and paper also kept them well entertained, but again I have to accept that they will draw on the tent carpet (I love the fact that our tent has a carpet!). There is no point taking a bag of baby toys for A - he spent the weekend shuffling round determined to get his hands on anything that looked less age-appropriate.

- A will look like a grubby urchin all weekend as he drags himself around on the grass, but he did love his evening bath in an Ikea washing basket. The bath was less successful for the bigger two so we're training them up to have a shower before we go again.

- as much as I dislike sand, it is well worth finding somewhere to camp close to the beach. The boys loved it, I loved the fact that it was a big open space (maybe not quite so open at West Wittering as it was so crowded!) and I didn't have to spend my time worrying about their behaviour or trying to rein them in. W and I spent lots of time competing to build the tallest pebble tower. A was quite happy shuffling around filling his stacking cups with pebbles, sometimes licking them but very rarely putting them in his mouth.