Long overdue camp post

Did you know Javi went to camp for a whole week? Of course you did ... because while he was gone, I mourned his absence and wondered what the hell I was thinking by letting him go.

But then I got him off the bus that Friday and he was so confident, so self assured, and so full of stories that I decided then and there he'd do a lot of camp in his lifetime. He was tanned (not sunburned), he was clean (though he did confess to wearing the same pair of boxers all week), and he had made friends (rather than sit in the corner and cry for his mom).

The child talked nonstop the entire hour and a half it took us to get home (including through a tasty lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Lillington). He let me in on a few choice acronyms that he still -- a month later -- likes to repeat. They are: cool something something loser (COOL) and junior educated rich kid (JERK). You only learn stuff like that at camp. In my day, campers learned: all day I dream about s??? (Adidas) and need interested kissing expert (Nike). (That last one came from the older girls who obsessed over kissing. Luckily this this time around the children are grouped off by age!)

This week-long sleepaway camp was Javi's first foray into summer camp and it really set the tone. He's participated in three day camps since then but none of them have lived up to the first. He did a three-day camp through the Extension Center that focus on soil and water conservation called Fun In The Sun. He collected leaves and soil samples to study their composition and learned about rain water harvesting.

Javi has also participated in the library's "Creativity Summer" program. He declined to participate in the reading contest (despite my best efforts to convince him to get in there and read the most books), but he goes every Monday in July to a drama workshop where he's learning acting and warm-up techniques and will perform in a play for the whole program on the last day. He also did a three-hour camp on pranks, tricks, and practical jokes. The only part of that one that he liked was learning to make fake vomit ... but his vomit looks more like brownies (which Bella did try to eat).

Summer is half over and Javi has only one camp left to do. That's the big shebang: Art Camp. He'll go for an hour a day for a week to class that will be held in the same art studio where Billy and I got married. I know he's going to love it.

I don't know what we'll do for the long, hot days of August, but as far as milestones and growing up goes, my Javi has definitely settled firmly into not-a-kid status. He can survive on his own for a whole week and has become a little social butterfly thanks to meeting so many new kids this summer. I'm so proud of him and can't wait to post pictures of his art!