“Are you finished playing in the tub?”

“Noooo.”

No?

Until Sunday night, my questions to Lincoln have always been unanswered verbally. I’ve gotten a head shake or an enthusiastic look when I’ve asked “Do you want some carrots?” or “Want to go down the slide?” But now, this child says ‘no.’

Visions of a five-year-old Lincoln screaming “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” in the middle of the grocery store when I deny him some sugary snack he had over friend X’s house the day before flood my head. I can’t have one of those! I can’t have one of those kids who yells “NO!” at me to every one of my requests. (It’s no new flash to me that every child does this so don’t go commenting on how naïve I am. I know. I just don’t want to say it out loud because then it’s true.)

This first “no” was, of course, the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. It was accompanied by such a serious look that I assumed he also knew what the word meant.

Always the experimenter, I asked “You don’t want out?”

“No.”

“Are you in the tub?”

“Noooo.”

Hm.

“Are you Lincoln?”

“NOOOO.”

Nope, doesn’t know the meaning.

He does not say ‘yes.’ Why? I mean, in our house, Linc rarely hears ‘no’ and when we ask him a question where the obvious answer would be ‘yes’ (Do you want a donut?) we answer ‘yes, please’ for him to teach him that’s the appropriate thing to do.

I’d like to know more about how kids pick up their first words. I thought for sure he’d say “OFF ROXIE,” which is said a billion times a day to my 70-pound lap dog, or “DAMN CATS,” which is said an equal number of times per day about two or more of our five cats. However, he says a collection of about eight words regularly ranging from the standards ‘dada’ and ‘mama’ to the why-did-he-pick-that-one-up ‘cheers!’

‘No’ is now thrown around our house in any conversation with Linc, whether appropriate or not. However, on the upside, he also says ‘please’ (“Peees”) and ‘thank you’ (“Dank yooou”).

ADORABLE times infinity!

Erin Hill is a first-time mom to Lincoln, who was born in January 2010. She's learning as she goes and is experiencing everything a new mom goes through while seeing the humor, irony, and enjoyment in her adventures.

Erin is a full-time technical writer and features freelance writer in her "spare time." She lives in Plum with Lincoln, her husband, Adam, their dog, Roxie, and five (yes, five) cats, Nirvana, Gary Roberts, Elvis, Talbot and Forrest.

After gushing about our first family vacation (to Washington D.C.), I was very excited to take Lincoln camping and tell you all about that wonderful trip.

However, today I will speak to you about the trip that was just—bad! Bad, bad, bad. No one got seriously hurt, we all made it back alive and there weren’t any major meltdowns, but each day was best described as gloomy, and we hit the reset button several times each day—something my husband and I do to just leave things behind and start over.

We arrived at the campground, which is just a little over an hour away from home, a little later than we wanted on Friday night. Adam ended up having to put the tent up in the dark while I tried to keep Lincoln and our dog away from the horses that were beside us in a field fenced off by one of those “for show only” wooden fences and what was marked as an ELECTRICAL FENCE. (I found out later, after the dog walked into the wire, that it was not active.)

It rained Friday night.

Saturday started out with Lincoln falling forward out of his camping chair bloodying his nose and busting his lip open.  After cleaning him up and eating breakfast, we decided to go to Morane State Park with the intention of having a delightful, relaxing day by the water. I applied Linc’s suntan lotion before we left the site and we were off.

For some reason it got 10 degrees hotter during the 10 minute drive, and when I went to get Linc from the car, his eyes were swollen shut. Apparently, he had gotten the “child safe” suntan lotion in them because it hadn’t dried because of the heat. We tried to shake it off and unloaded everyone from the car, but it just didn’t work out. Linc never recovered, and we ended up packing up after five minutes and heading back to the campground to swim to cool off.

POOL’S CLOSED!

UGH! I told Linc all week how he was going to get to swim and now the green-water pool was closed!

OK. Well, we just sat at the site for the rest of the night.

It rained Saturday night.

On Sunday, Adam and I both originally agreed to hang low and stay at the campground for safety reasons because that morning the dog had escaped the tent. Luckily I found her walking down the road just outside the tent. After running out of things to do at the site, we got adventurous and took a drive to Linesville Spillway at Pymatuning State Park so Linc could feed the fish. Have you ever been there? So gross!! Anyway, that was an enjoyable time—except for getting lost.

When we came back, the pool was open. I got Linc suited up and he had a great time! Some older kids were jumping in over and over and Linc wanted to also. I did that best version I could for him while keep him safe—with the weekend we’d been having, it was best to be overprotective.

Things were looking better until that night when we were enjoying a nice time by the fire and heard something rustling behind up. ‘Twas a skunk digging in our garbage the campground workers never picked up. With me carrying Linc and Adam carrying the dog, we walked swiftly to the tent and hid there for 45 minutes begging the skunk to leave.

After “Skunky” left, we finished our night by the fire and retired to the tent at midnight eager for our last day there on Monday.

It rained Sunday night…

And rained…

And rained…

Then, it rained in the tent. At 1:00 a.m., Adam determined our “WeatherMaster” tent must have exceeded its rain absorbency, and we fashioned a canopy to catch the rain falling in our tent.  Adam pointed out a few minutes later our construction was weak and it would soon leak in a different spot.

At 1:30 a.m. in the rain, we packed up Lincoln, who was sound asleep, the dog and all our crap and went home.

See—bad.

However, on the way home, I realized Adam and I had not fought once in this highly stressful time, we’d worked together as a team and Lincoln seemed to have a great time after his few incidents even though his parents were ready to throw in the towel a few days before we did.

Erin Hill is a first-time mom to Lincoln, who was born in January 2010. She's learning as she goes and is experiencing everything a new mom goes through while seeing the humor, irony, and enjoyment in her adventures.

Erin is a full-time technical writer and features freelance writer in her "spare time." She lives in Plum with Lincoln, her husband, Adam, their dog, Roxie, and five (yes, five) cats, Nirvana, Gary Roberts, Elvis, Talbot and Forrest.

Today I left my job of five and a half years for a great opportunity at another full-time gig. I’m not good with change. I’m not good with uncertainty. I’m not good with goodbyes.

How do I teach Lincoln to accept that things happen like this—you move on, others move on—when I have trouble with it myself?

I never want to hold Lincoln back because of my insecurities or fears. I’d like him to be able to charge at anything he wants and go for whatever he dreams.

I’m overcoming my fears of change and uncertainty slowly but successfully. I think I can be a good role model of how to overcome a fear—when the world is full of change and uncertainty, I really had no choice.

However, I will never, EVER overcome my fear of, say, snorkeling. I tried it, didn’t like it, the end.

My mom is fearful of a lot of things and she tried to make me fear these things, too. She warns me of the dangers (of driving downtown?) and talks about how much it scares her to do or experience certain things.

I don’t want to do that to Linc. I was lucky I didn’t catch my mom’s fears, but I can’t be sure Linc won’t feel certain vibes from me and not do something he wants because I may be afraid of it for myself.

Do you instill your fears in your children on purpose to protect them from what you worry about or do you hide or address them with the kids in order to let them make their own decisions?

Erin Hill is a first-time mom to Lincoln, who was born in January 2010. She's learning as she goes and is experiencing everything a new mom goes through while seeing the humor, irony, and enjoyment in her adventures.

Erin is a full-time technical writer and features freelance writer in her "spare time." She lives in Plum with Lincoln, her husband, Adam, their dog, Roxie, and five (yes, five) cats, Nirvana, Gary Roberts, Elvis, Talbot and Forrest

We took Lincoln to see the fireworks downtown again this year.

I guess it’s a tradition now. But, will it become one of those he hates later?

Like, will twelve-year-old Lincoln groan “OH MAN! Not the downtown fireworks again. MAAAAAAAM!”?

That’s one thing I worry about when trying to establish traditions—in 10 years, will it still be fun or will it be something we have to do?

My other worry is that I’ll forget the next year.  I’m actually terrified of this. I mean, a lot of traditions happen with holidays and they only happen once a year.

What if next year, I forget to carry on the tradition of buying my husband and son pajamas and giving them on Christmas Eve? Of course, they’d be looking forward to and expecting this awesome tradition. What if mom forgets?!

The pressure! Whew.

I think that if a tradition is to become a tradition, it would either become one automatically, therefore, you’d continue doing it or you’d never forget because it is a tradition, right?

I don’t want to force anything thing on my family just so we can have a Norman Rockwell kind of life, but I do want to have things my kids look back on and say “we used to do this every year!” and possibly carry it on themselves.

We don’t really have anything like that in my family and I don’t think my husband does either—at least nothing we’ve carried on into adulthood.

We would vacation every summer, but not in any one particular place. We’d open our presents on Christmas Eve and stocking on Christmas Day. Is that a tradition, though, of just lack of willpower?

What traditions do you have, and how have they stuck?

Erin Hill is a first-time mom to Lincoln, who was born in January 2010. She's learning as she goes and is experiencing everything a new mom goes through while seeing the humor, irony, and enjoyment in her adventures.

Erin is a full-time technical writer and features freelance writer in her "spare time." She lives in Plum with Lincoln, her husband, Adam, their dog, Roxie, and five (yes, five) cats, Nirvana, Gary Roberts, Elvis, Talbot and Forrest.