Ruby Goes Camping: Part 4- Feeding and Staying Cool

Part 4, and the final part of my series on taking our daughter, Ruby, on her first camping trip at 5 months old.

Feeding: This part I did not think out that well. I took a small food mill we had to mush up food to feed Ruby, but we had only just begun to feed her solids, and were not feeding her much that would travel well for consecutive days in a cooler. We had not fed her anything that I had not made myself at this point, so that further complicated things. So she ate rice cereal and bananas that week. Unfortunately I was no longer breast feeding so we were doing formula, which was easy (too easy). I also did not think about how I would feed her - how to keep her still that is. I fed her a few times in her car seat, but after the drive to the site, that was the last place she wanted to sit. We ended up just having her sit on the folding table we had brought. Lucky for us she was already sitting up very well on her own, so that was helpful.

eating in camp

We have since discovered the squeeze packs of food (Ellas Kitchen, HappyBaby and Plum Organics are our favorites), and these have been terrific for us on recent trips.

Staying Cool: The afternoons turned out to be warmer than we had anticipated. Too warm for Ruby. Even with the PeaPod for shade, Ruby was still getting too hot. We were trying to figure out how to keep her cool, and she and I ended up spending most of the afternoons in the van with all the windows and doors open, which made for a nice wind tunnel and created a good breeze to keep us cool. One day after the hike back to camp Ruby had fallen to sleep in the pack and was pretty hot, which had us a bit worried. When we got back to camp we took her out, took all her clothes off and let her play in some water. We took the top off of one of our food storage containers (we just use the large plastic boxes) and poured a tiny amount of our cold water from our coolers into it. She LOVED this. She had so much fun splashing and playing. It immediately perked her up and was a good source of entertainment.

Playing in the water to stay cool

It was at this point I had an epiphany! If I had only brought the small plastic bathtub we had I could have both used it as a chair for feeding her, and as a "swimming pool" to keep her cool. I think she is too large for that solution now that she is fully mobile, but it is my advice to others :)