Chamberlins Chasing Chaos: First tubing trip of the year

Which is which? Who is this 4-month-old?

(Answer at end of post)

Last Sunday (the 5th) we woke up sluggish and realized we either had to get out of the house, or we would spend an entirely unproductive day lying around, so we decided spur-of-the-moment to drive down to McComb and try a tubing trip down the Bogue Chitto. It’s about a 2 hour drive each way, but since we spent almost 4 hours on the river, it was totally worth it.

There’s not much to say about the tubing itself – it’s pretty much a lazy river that you can alternately walk, swim, and/or tube down while watching out for fallen trees and branches. The first time we went (last July or August – see, THIS is why I have a blog! I can’t remember exactly… August – yep, it was August), we went with the Granges and the whole experience was new, exciting, and well, a little painful (Oh, the bruises!). :-) By now, I have figured out how to do it while expending the least amount of energy possible and it’s not quite as exciting, although still a really neat way to spend an afternoon, but the lack of new bruises compensates for the loss of excitement – really. For the kids, the trip is really divided into two parts: before the rope swing and after the rope swing. And right at the end there’s a clay mud bank for sliding down. (Picture to the right) Loads of fun.

Usually the rope swing is the highlight of the trip, but for some reason this time everybody except Katherine (duh) was skittish. Elizabeth and Caroline let us throw them off once, and that was it. Rachel only let me throw her after realizing it would probably hurt more to try to climb back down, then she was done. Daniel kept stepping up to the edge, then losing his nerve and backing off. He must’ve done this 20 times at least and wasted more than 15 minutes while Katherine climbed up, swung off, climbed up, swung off… Finally, he stepped up and jumped. Then he was unstoppable. Over and over he jumped as fast as he could climb back up. I’m so happy that he finally did it on his own. It was SO hard to leave him alone and let him choose to jump when he kept chickening out. At one point, Chris and I just looked at each other and said, “What’s best here?” Let him feel frustrated and humiliated because he clearly wants to jump, but can’t make himself? Or do we MAKE him and just hope his therapist can sort him out later? Believe it or not, leaving him alone was the harder option (because what if he DIDN’T jump?), but I’m so glad we did. Amazingly, after Katherine tried a front flip jumping off the edge, Daniel tried it too. We were slack-jawed. I never would’ve believed he would try that, never. I’m also quite certain he never will again, considering he landed flat on his back and is quick to recount the pain in detail even now! But still…it’s such a contradiction that he even tried. Chris took a couple of videos that I’m sharing on here, and the first one is a real treat. Seriously, I can watch this over and over and it just gets sillier! Katherine stepped up to the edge and whoops! She slipped:

And, even though he didn’t slip, Daniel still can’t do anything without theatrics. Katherine flailed the whole way down without a sound, but Daniel whooped the entire way into the water.

Caroline really enjoyed the trip this time because she is such a good swimmer now. No life jacket for her. I had to take her tube with me a lot of the time since she wanted to just swim – slowly, of course.

Here’s Elizabeth climbing the clay mud slide. The clay is so slippery you have to hold the rope just to get up. Of course, the rope is also covered in slippery mud…