Last week I built an indoor tent fort in Tucker’s room and sat down on the floor to play “camping in Jurassic park” with my son. I thought I’d be smart and build the tent fort in his bedroom instead of in the living room, so it wouldn’t be in the way.
He wanted to make a pretend campfire. So, like a good creative little mom, I took the lantern he had set up by the tent, and I used a washable orange marker to color the lantern lens and make it look more like a “campfire” for our camp. You know, when you are camping in Jurassic park you have to have a campfire to scare away the T-Rex and other “meat eaters”. Then we proceeded to search his toy boxes for firewood, and Lincoln logs did the trick. We set those up all around our new, imaginary campfire.
Tucker got really into it, and I was proud of my ingenuity. After all, how many moms can build a fake campfire so good? It was a lot of fun.
Well, shortly after our camping expedition ended, cousin Audrey and grandma came knocking on the door for a surprise visit. So then cousin Audrey went camping with Tucker for a while.
In the next few days, I noticed an odd smell coming from Tucker’s carpet. I searched for it everywhere, with no luck. Eventually sister found a pile of empty water bottles in his room, and he told us what happened.
“Me and Audrey put out the campfire,” he said proudly, with a beaming smile. “We poured water all over the fire wood to put it out really good!”
It was very Boyscout -like of him, except for our creative little campfire was built right on top of a big thick carpet–which was now nice and wet underneath it–hence the odd smell. So that was a nice, fun mess to clean up this weekend.
To make the story funnier, Audrey’s daddy is a firefighter, so I guess it’s fair to say she takes after him….leaves no fire untended.
We also found the jumbo box of snack-size bags chips that had gone missing.
“We sneaked the box of chips into the tent and hid them under my bed!” he shrieked with joy. It was apparently, the perfect camping snack assortment.
I think I’ll build the tent in the kitchen next time, and let Tucker know there is a burn ban!