Games in the Sand

PEEK

A

BOO

Pictures and a Note From Mama Bear

We are BACK!

Below you will find some initial pictures from our trip and a backlog of blog posts. We were totally unplugged for our week at the beach (so nice) and so we wrote blog posts in the evenings with the intention of finding some hotspot and updating everyone. Well beach fun and sun took precedence so you are getting them all now. Lots of reading and tons of stories. We are home and not so happy to be here, we already miss our wonderful beach vacation. Little Man fell asleep softly crying "want to go to beach house now please". Breaks my heart a little that life can't always be a vacation but I love that he had such a good time that all he wants to do is go back. Can't blame the boy one bit!!

Some Accepted Truths About the Beach

1. There is no way to get all of the sand out of Peanut’s fat rolls and we gave up trying about mid-week and figure that we will give him one great bath as soon as we get home.

2. The family shower at the outside shower at the beach house is the best call upon returning from the beach. We juggle kids from one of us to the other until somehow we all end up without sand on us and then go on up for whatever meal awaits us (unfortunately we didn’t figure out this magic configuration until Thursday afternoon).

3. Little Man eats twice his normal food intake after playing in the ocean – and we have just accepted that while on a beach vacation there probably won’t be any vegetables on the menu, in fact the menu has been limited to pizza, hot dogs, mac and cheese, ice cream, cookies and blue Gatorade.

4. While we will bring a ton of food with the good intention of making our own meals instead of going out to eat – we will probably only make one meal and then decide that no one should have to cook while on vacation SO we will either go out or order in every night and save the left overs for lunch the next day ensuring that we gain at least 10 pounds.

5. If we don’t reach that 10 pounds from going out to eat, we will make the difference up in eating fudge and other fun chocolate and purchasing it on Tuesday and thinking we will bring some home for gifts for our friends is really just a joke…so we will have to stop by on our way out of town and see if it survives the drive home!

6. The coupon for FREE HERMIT CRAB with the purchase of crab condo is just a way to lure parents into getting the first pet for their kid and then having to explain how Mrs. Hewitt (the hermit crab) aka Abby Crabby went to hermit crab heaven when he was totally forgotten about and not given any food or water for days. Oh the cruelty of the free crab with condo coupon.

7. When Little Man says “I want to go to beach house now” it really means, “My hands are messy from the sand and I want to go back to the beach house and rinse off and then whine to go back to the beach again” so the better solution is to take him into the ocean and show him how to rinse off in the water. This ritual will be performed at least 4 times an hour while at the beach.

8. Peanut has proven to us that he is the most transportable sleeper ever. He has slept on the beach (on a towel and in his tent), on a boat ride, in the car, in our arms, in his pack n play, at the aquarium. We have learned that he can power nap and then be ready to go as long as he gets fed on time he is a happy happy baby.

9. It is possible to lay out in the sun, book in hand with no worries with 2 young kids (if you time naps right and your wonderful husband agrees to stay inside to listen for kids). It might only happen once during the vacation, but it can happen and it WILL BE as good as you remember.

10 No matter what we do, we will bring the beach back with us to the house and we will be finding sand in places for weeks. Not that I am complaining at all, I will accept sand for weeks in my house and the fat rolls of the baby for a perfect week like we just had!

Television and Little Man – the love/hate/teach relationship

This morning we allowed Little Man to turn on the television during breakfast as a special vacation treat and he asked us to put George on. This created a dilemma that was difficult to explain to him. At home, he never watches live TV. We DVR Curious George and Sesame Street and let him watch it whenever we decide he gets TV time. So down the beach where we don’t even have a remote that works for the tv, so changing channels is a challenge (since I am lazy) we definitely don’t have the DVR option. But he doesn’t even know what DVR is, the way we can play George or Elmo for him whenever he wants is his normal and at the beach he got a little taste of life without the extra technology that he is afforded. But then he got lucky. As he was playing with his trains all of a sudden he tuned into the TV and started jumping up and down because it announced that George was on next. So he got his George fix after all.

Curious George came in handy on this beach trip. We were in the car on the way to play miniature golf and we were trying to explain to Little Man how to play the game. We kept trying to break it down into really easy terms and all of a sudden he says “Hit ball with club into hole and I win, I know George play putt putt”. So there we have it. We thought that we could teach him how to play but Curious George beat us to it. As we started playing, he did know the basics of the game but the taking turns part and only hitting your own ball obviously wasn’t covered in the episode of George as it became a free for all of hitting all balls over and over into the hole. We played the first 10 holes before heat and exhaustion had us running for the air conditioned car. Our number one rule of this trip was not to push the kids towards meltdown just to finish an activity or stay somewhere for a certain amount of time – it was time to cut bait and we did without hesitation!!

Peanut Turns 5 Months Old at the beach

Just a word about Peanut (since he tends to get trumped by his big brother’s stories) on his 5 month birthday. Peanut has been an angel this trip. He has adjusted well to having less of a schedule and naps on the go in the car as needed and then takes a long nap when Little Man naps. We captured his first toothy grin today while at the aquarium. He loved watching the fish and was in total glory staring at the fish in the tanks while Little Man ran in circles and played. He doesn’t seem to mind the sand but has made it clear through grimaces that he doesn’t enjoy the cold ocean water. He took his first shower with me today and was as slippery as a greased pig – a 21 pound greased pig to be exact. He has preferences for toys and is starting to get bored and want new entertainment. He reaches for his binky and leans towards me if I walk by him when he is in someone else’s arms. Peanut is still working on the sitting up and has his good moments and bad ones too. All in all, he is still the angel he was when he was born 5 months ago and we are totally in love with him.

Peanut's First Toothy Grin

Fixing our Bad Language Habit

I swear (except that I try not to) that this post isn’t about swear words. It is about the bad language habit that resulted in Little Man being scared of the ocean. As the waves crashed and the water came in we used the unfortunate phrase “the water’s going to get you”. Well that scared Little Man into thinking that the water was going to get him and do something bad to him, and rightly so. I mean, how else do we use that phrase. The tickle monster is going to get you – and then we attack him. So today when he was whining that he wanted to go back to the beach house I walked down to the water and sat right about where the water was washing up. I took a shovel and a bucket and just started playing. Sure enough, Little Man wanted to join me. So he sat on my lap and when the water started to come near us I checked my bad language at the door and said “come here water, come here” and when it rolled over us I proclaimed “Yay, the water came here and now it is going back to the ocean, bye-bye water”. Well don’t you know, it made all the difference. Within a half hour he went from screaming if the water came near him to being chest deep in the water holding my hand and jumping the waves that came near us yelling “come here water, come here” or alternately “bye-bye water come again soon”. He told me that he had so much fun playing with the ocean today and he wanted to go and play with it again tomorrow. I love looking at the world through my toddler’s eyes and realizing that he really thinks the ocean was playing a game with him.

Oh and have I ever mentioned that I have a deep dark fear of the ocean. I mean, I love the beach, the sand, the sun, the fresh air. But I don’t like to go in the water past my ankles, I am terrified of the things that live in the ocean that I can’t see. But today, I didn’t have the option of giving into my fear because I was concentrating of ridding my 2 year old of his fear. Even as I looked down and saw a giant ( there might be some exaggeration in the size description) crab walking in the water just a few inches (slight exaggeration in the distance too) from my feet. I didn’t scream, or jump up and down or run back to the safety of the dry sand. I just looked away and took a deep breath and said “come here water, come here” with Little Man holding my hand. I figured if he could face his fear, so could I!

I Know a Papa Bear that Swallowed a Fly… I don’t know why…

Ok, so Papa Bear didn’t really swallow a fly, but he almost swallowed a bee that had decided to take a swim in his coffee. Luckily, the feeling of bee on his tongue was foreign enough to make him spit it out. Unfortunately he was driving at the time making it a little more challenging to ensure that the bee he had spit onto the floor was indeed dead. I had a run-in with the fly. There was a lone fly that was driving us crazy around the beach house. So armed with fly swatters (Little Man thought this was really fun) we went on a fly hunt. Saying..We’re going on a fly hunt and what did we find… Ok, we are total dorks, but back to the story. The fly was elusive and just as we were about to give up the fly landed on my back. Papa Bear shouts “Don’t move, the fly is on your back”. I freeze and then THWACK the fly swatter kills the fly ON MY BACK. But at least we got him and now we will hunt down his little friends. As we were eating dinner, Papa Bear and I deep in conversation, realize that the chatter coming from Little Man is “don’t bother me, don’t bother me don’t bother me me me” – his version of shoo fly don’t bother me – so we got the fly swatter back out and took care of business.