Toothless hiked all day on his own again.

We went mostly on trail but had to dip into the creek and a few challenging gullies which slowed us down. Today was just 6 miles.

What’s hard for him is the transitions. He gets lots of breaks, can easily sustain this level of activity at home. But he struggles in the morning and after lunch. This is true at home too. Morning time is hard. After lunch used to be naptime but he rejected that so now it’s just hard.

Who would have thought? The challenges at home are also present on trail?

Previously we had been shoulder carrying him. It’s hard. And to shoulder carry means he hikes less and we carry him more. After discussion this is not the trip objective so we will do shorter days to let him hike more and we will only shoulder carry when needed (eg: unsafe for him, or need to get somewhere quickly due to food or water limitations). We will try that out and see.

Regardless today was nice.

Lil Flier is such a fun kid. She was sharing her toys with me today which seems to bring her so much joy. And we sang Old McDonald. She loves when I make animal sounds. We did a lot of standing during breaks as well. She’s getting good but still needs support. She’s getting close to crawling too. She’s a pro at secretly scooting forward and reaching things and rolls on her hands and feet to crawl but doesn’t have the crawling part figured out.

Toothless has made personal progress with a few things. He had some friends influence his play and at some point last year talked a lot about shooting and police. We have been guiding him away from the police worship that he seemed to develop from that play at daycare. I really don’t like that play and didn’t want him being the one bringing it to kindergarten in September. He’s finally stopped talking about it. His conversations are a lot more realistic and certainly silly sometimes but more like how he used to talk before this started coming into his pretend play. He’s back to pretending to do work on trail, being a train, singing songs and just being the sweet person he is. He’s really into singing “Danger Zone’ by Kenny Loggins and it’s very cute how he sings it.

We got to camp a bit late. Kids took a bit to settle down. But it was like 7pm. Neighbors in a nearby tent yelled they were trying to sleep. Sorry guys. It’s not hiker midnight yet. We are trying. At least that settled Toothless down a bit and made him realize the other hikers are actually trying to sleep.