Sunday, November 06, 2011

What’s a beach?

This, among others, is a question that we imagine our kids think when we talk about going new places (and when we arrive there).  At about two months home there was a going away gathering for a friend in a park right on the water.  It was the first time we really ventured out and decided it would be a ‘safe’ place to gauge how Jonathon and Madison were doing (nice, open environment). 

This was the first time either of them had ever seen water outside of a bathtub and been to a beach-like place (it’s not a ‘real’ beach but since it was low tide it counted as one)!  We had no idea what to expect, would they be scared? run away from us to go to someone new?  love it?  Madison (who is turning out to be our risk taker) immediately wanted to check it out.  Jonathon, who is more reserved, was content staying in Joe’s arms and observing for awhile. 

Both kids impressed us by staying with us the entire day.  They were curious about other people just looking at them (Madison gave them all her serious stare down), but were interested only in being with us or near the other kids.  One example of how great they did was Madison was playing with a couple kids a little ways away when her water shoe came off.  She picked up the shoe and handed it to friends daughter and pointed at Myra then started walking towards her.  Myra was in a group of a couple other women, but Madison made sure that the shoe got to her to help get it back on!

The low tide made for a lot of tide pools with a ton of hermit crabs of all sizes.  It didn’t take long before both kids were really into it and having a blast.  A good friend of ours took amazing pictures for us:

2011_10_01_IMG_2726 2011_10_01_IMG_2560  2011_10_01_IMG_2579 2011_10_01_IMG_2565-3 2011_10_01_IMG_2611-1 2011_10_01_IMG_2621-2

Our original plan was only to stay for an hour or maybe two because of nap times and not wanting it to be too much for the kids.  However, Madison was having so much fun we couldn’t put a stop to it and Jonathon surprised us by falling asleep on Joe and then staying asleep on a nearby blanket!

2011_10_01_IMG_2638    2011_10_01_IMG_2642

Some friends had a homemade ice cream contraption that different people took turns with, resulting a very good chocolate milkshake.  Madison really enjoyed this – another first!

 2011_10_01_IMG_2630 2011_10_01_IMG_2629