When it rains, you make mudpuddles

This Charlie Brown cartoon brings back a memory from August of 1990. I was traveling to attend a karate summer camp in the Poconos of Pennsylvania from my home in New Hampshire. My wife, Maureen, and I normally attended them together. But at that time she was 8 months pregnant awaiting our daughter’s birth that September. So I went by myself and took our son, Victor Michael, along with me to give her a break for the weekend.

 

He was 18 months old and slept the entire trip down in his car seat. When we arrived it was raining and first I had to set up our tent. So I got him into his raincoat and rain hat and set him on the ground outside the car as I got to work on the tent.

 

He did not understand where he was and looked lost at first. But he stood there and I got down to work. When I completed setting up the tent I turned my attention back to him. I discovered he found a mud puddle and was stomping happily through the puddle. The cartoon shows Snoopy acting just like Victor Michael was that day.

 

We had a good night together and when getting up and having been fed, I dressed him for the day that we would spend together. It had stopped raining and the sun was shining. So immediately he found the nearest mud puddle and went in having fun.

 

When I saw the mess he was making of himself and the fun he was having, I knew what the right answer was.

 

I could of course immediately did change his clothing and that would have begun an endless course of changing clothing for him throughout the day.

 

Instead making an executive decision I told him, “if dirty you want then dirty you may have.” And just let him play.

 

Many mothers at the camp asked if I wanted to have them take care of him.

 

I politely refused each request.

 

He, his stroller and I had a great day, going between clinic to clinic and playing on the merry go round they had for children on the camp grounds.

 

That night I was teaching the midnight workout. He accompanied me and when the rain began again I just pulled the top over him and he slept through my fun. Never missed any sleep.

 

We lasted 3 days of fun he and I, and when it was over, together we rode home. He asleep in his car seat the entire time.

 

Home to mother and his dryer house.

 

We had a great weekend together.