Happy Campers

Yesterday, Tiny and Buba went to gymnastics camp. It was held in the same gym where they have taken gymnastics classes with me since September, but this would be their first camp experience. They would go together, but without me. From 9:00am until 12:30pm.

I was very excited for them, but also a little nervous too. Tiny was ready (as I knew she would be) from the moment I told her about it. I was pretty sure she was going to be just fine. Buba didn’t say much about it. He wondered who his coach would be (I wasn’t sure at the time we first talked about it), but that was about it. I wasn’t sure how he’d handle being without either parent for 3.5 hours. I thought the odds were about 50/50 that I’d get a phone call to come and get him early.

T (who is now home on summer break) has been in charge of the kids most mornings while I’m off tutoring (and sometimes at the gym). Since I didn’t have any students scheduled that morning, I decided to give him some “me time” while I took the kids to gymnastics camp and then hung around in that area for the morning. I also thought Buba (who is a total daddy’s boy) might go more willingly if he thought T was otherwise occupied with things at home. I’m not really sure if any of this mattered, but drop-off was a cinch. Both Buba and Tiny walked eagerly into the gym and sat down with their coach (someone they knew, but not one of our regular coaches) and the other 3 and 4-year-olds. I kissed them both and was on my way.

The gym is only 15-20 minutes from our house, but I decided to stay within a 5-10 minute radius of the gym just in case I got a phone call that I needed to come back. Fortunately there was Target and Kohl’s and Starbucks to keep me occupied. I got in plenty of “me time” as I shopped for new workout tops and pjs and then sipped a mocha frappuccino while sitting in the sun reading a novel.

My cell phone did not ring once! I was so happy that the kids were, most likely, doing very well at camp. But I still headed back about 15 minutes early, just to make sure they were doing okay and to see if I might be able to sneak a peek through the observation windows. But when I looked into the gym, I didn’t see my kids anywhere. I saw the coach that I had left them with, but my kids were not with the group. I felt a little panicked, as I imagined that they had fallen apart and been whisked off to some secluded room for criers. But then a staff member saw me, and explained that they had become tired from all the activities and had gone upstairs with another coach to take a break and read books. She also talked about how well they had done, and how everyone had fallen in love with them (they were, by far, the tiniest kids in the camp, which ranged from 3 to maybe 10-12 year olds).

I waited for Buba and Tiny at the bottom of the steps, and they both had big smiles when they saw me waiting there. Tiny rushed right by me to go into the waiting area, where there are lots of toys, but Buba wanted right up into my arms. “I was a little bit crying,” he told me. The coach confirmed, but she also said that he was easily distracted into something fun. I gave Buba a big hug and told him that I was so proud of him for being a big boy camper. He had the hugest smile on his face!

The camp runs Monday through Friday for about six weeks, but campers can go as many or as few days as they’d like. Given the cost (this stuff definitely isn’t cheap!), Buba and Tiny will go just twice this summer, and they won’t go again until mid-august. They’re both eager to go back, and are so excited to tell everyone what big, happy campers they were!