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The wife and I have decided to become one with nature. We want to experience the forest and the grass. We want to see the wildlife. We want to sleep under the stars and breathe fresh mountain air. We want a camper.

I know. I know. Some of you may question our techniques but becoming one with nature doesn’t mean you need to light your own fires or wake up with a stick in your back. Being one with nature is having your own potty. Being one with nature is having heat and a toilet. Or maybe not.

The wife and I have used all sorts of arguments to convince ourselves it is a good idea. It costs less than a hotel room (minus the costs of the camper itself, of course). We can take the dog (when he not driving the wife insane). We can go anywhere we want (as if we were somehow restricted before). None of these arguments are as good, or even as true, as the real one: we believe it will be fun — and not just fun for the two of us. It’ll be fun for the whole family.

I should blame the brother-in-law. He really started all of this. I was happy with our tent pitching ways and he had to show us how the other half lives. It’s not like I don’t remember. I spent a large portion of my childhood camping. My parents had a 28 foot camper that was my little playground. Bunk beds housed my brothers and I in the back. My sister got the converted dining room table in the middle and my parents slept in the big bed up front. It wasn’t vacation without loading up the Cadillac and towing that monstrosity somewhere West.

My wife, on the other hand, is in unfamiliar territory. Her family didn’t spend their time on the camping circuit. Our tent is really her first tiny home away from home. This talk of camp fires is more of an adult activity and largely my doing. Her brother was the first in her family to really step up to the camping plate. It turns out we won’t be all that far behind.

See, we’re past the thinking stage. Today, we put our money where our dreams are. We bought a popup camper.

Popup campers aren’t what they used to be. Ours comes with all the features of home. Heat and air conditioning top the list. Heat lets us extend the camping season without losing a limb to frostbite. Air conditioning lets us ignore the summer forecast a bit. I won’t be sleeping in a pool of my own sweat and, more importantly, neither will my child.

The bathroom and shower are next. The bathroom isn’t a necessity for me — I can use a tree — but the wife tends to squat when she pees. Cambell won’t be dressing for a cold trip to the campsite toilet in the middle of the night. That’s a huge relief to all three of us. The shower gives us easy place to find a warm rinse off if the campsite doesn’t provide one and a convenient place to wash the child no matter what the weather.

Probably the coolest feature is that it not only bumps out (the term for the two beds that shoot out the ends of a popup) but it slides out on the side. The whole dinette pushes out to give you floor space, space that can house a pack-and-play if need be (and need be).

Other features just round out the package. The kitchen sports a stove (in addition to a second stove for the outside) and a sink. There’s a ton of storage and even a cable TV hookup, if we really want to forget that were camping.  As far as popup campers go, this one is close to the top of the line.

To say we are excited is an understatement. We’re ready to hook this thing behind the Xterra. We’re ready to hit the road. We have visions of traveling far and wide. We’ll see the world! I tell ya.

Ok, we might start someplace a bit closer, like here or here. But we’ll get out there sometime. We’ll soak in the sun. We’ll visit new places and stay under the trees. And, yes, we might just listen to the light hum of the air conditioning. Ah, nature. Don’t you love it?

To everyone who’s been asking, Cambell is feeling much better. Although I’d hate to jinx it, the pneumonia appears to be behind him now. All that praying paid off handsomely.

The little tike perked up all in one day. He had spent about a week acting lackadaisical and not entirely himself. This past weekend we got him back. His bright smile returned. He spent a full day running around the house doing something other than attempting to digest his latest trickle of snot. Sorry, sad but true.

While I’m counting my blessings, I should say that I’m grateful that Cam has inherited daddy’s sleeping habits when he’s sick. When I’m sick, I want nothing more than sleep. I’ll wake when it’s all over and I’m feeling better. Cam did his fair share of sleep over the past couple of weeks. More importantly, when he did sleep, he slept soundly. Our sleeplessness was more due to stress and a change of location — the wife and I slept on a futon matress in the baby’s room for several days — than a wide-eyed baby. That’s good for all three of us.

His return to health will do a lot for the cabin fever experienced by both the wife and I. Both of us spent time home from work in the last week due to grandmom the babysitter becoming ill — in what looks to be a not-so-unrelated occurrence — and we’re anxious see walls unlike those of our own. We also want to shop. A Very Important Purchase* is coming up and peering through the windows of the internet is no longer salving our appetite.

But we’re mostly happy just to have things get back to normal. Little things, like the good night hugs of tiny arms, are so much sweeter when you aren’t worrying about visiting the hospital.

* – I’ll get to this in a future post. Stay tuned.

Friday’s weather – a wintery mix of cold rain, freezing rain, and more rain – was awful. The sky made little effort to brighten above a low dim. We have these days every winter. Sometimes they wait until March. A cold shower washes away the snow, now more slush than snowman. It’s Mother Nature’s way of rushing things along toward spring. Ignore this damp, bone chilling day. A thaw is on the way.

Still, it wasn’t the cold or the rain that left me shuddering on Friday. It was worry. On Wednesday, we found out that little Cambell had pneumonia and worry lines have peppered the faces of two first time parents ever since. Outside of a nasty little flu late last year, this was the first real illness we’ve encountered with our little one. Words like hospital don’t enter my vocabulary often. On Wednesday, it did.

It all started with a little cough Wednesday morning. Coughs aren’t usually something to worry about and we sent him to the babysitter. During the day it got worse. By the time my wife picked him up, he was wheezing. She went directly to the nighttime pediatrician. I came straight from work to join her.

Cam wasn’t well. His cough had worsened considerably. They ordered an X-ray and I accompanied him to radiology. What awaited me was a little unexpected; I had not thought through the entire process. It turns that they take it for granted that infants won’t exactly sit still for X-rays. Their solution to the problem involved a wooden seat not unlike the child seat we use to feed him dinner. The exception was two clear pieces of hardened plastic which held his body in place, with his arms high above his head. The technician spun him left and right in his medieval torture device as he let his displeasure be known. What was the worst part? The first set of pictures didn’t turn out. We had to do it twice. I don’t know who was more upset, him or I.

Cambell and I returned to my worried wife to wait for the doctor. He had pneumonia. The big question of the day was where we would be sleeping, home or at the hospital. Two other kids that night were already on their way to the hospital. It seems we weren’t the only one dealing with pneumonia. The doctor needed to see how he would respond to her treatments before we knew if those kids would have company.

Three nebulizer treatments followed. He fought us on the first one. He was upset for the second and he collapsed during the third. The effort exhausted him physically and us emotionally. I just kept worrying about resentment. He was in a strange place being forced into situations he was unfamiliar. No one explained this mask being pressed against his face. What was going on? The argument of being “for his own good” sounded hollow to me. Heck, the dentist is for my own good. That doesn’t make me excited to see him.

The doctor took her time deciding what to do with us. The fence was straddled. Eventually, home won out. He had responded to his treatments. I went to grab his prescriptions, one of which included a chamber used to administer inhaler treatments. I was home just before 1:00 am. There were lots of tired folks in the house that night.

On both Thursday and Friday, he returned to his regular pediatrician. On Thursday we were told to continue his medicine. On Friday, the inhaler was replaced by a nebulizer. This time we got to play the home version.

The weekend was filled with visits from the grandparents. Cambell improved over the weekend but his progress has been slow. He is still having nebulizer treatments every four hours but I have to say he’s been really good about them. We set up Bear and the Big Blue house and shove the steaming pipe in his face. He turns it on and watches the screen until we turn it off. When we do, he claps his hands and gets down from the couch. He doesn’t need anyone to tell him how good he is. I think he knows.

On Tuesday, we found out that the nebulizer treatments will continue for a little while but, for those who’ve asked he is getting better. He’s eating good, drinking good, and sleeping good. He’s got plenty of energy and he’ll even pose for a picture or two.

I’m quite proud of how good he’s been through all of this and thankful of all those folks who’ve expressed concern and well wishes for our little one. We’re hoping that we are on the back end of this thing. There’s nothing else that could make the rain go away any faster.