Beach Day

It happened. I took four children to the ocean beach. My sister-in-law is the best beach mom and aunt ever. Meghan helped me so much. It was to her advantage because I think she wants us to go again!

Isaiah immediately ate a fist full of sand and crawled all over effectively covering himself in sand before I could even get a good layer of sunscreen on. Only his nose was pink tonight. When we took him down to the water he LOVED it. Splashed and squealed and crawled straight for the waves. No fear!

 Josiah couldn't wait for Caleb to teach him how to ride waves on the boogie board. He learned in no time and was on his boogie board until his tummy was board burned to the point that he couldn't ride any more.

 It was at that point that I thought it was time for us to go home. Josiah was ready and hurting--I wanted to avoid a meltdown with him. Isaiah was very tired. I started to gather things up, Meghan turned around and snapped this picture:

 I was holding Isaiah and all of a sudden he just fell asleep. He slept for about 20 minutes and that was enough of a reset for us to stay another hour. Josiah recovered. He didn't boogie board anymore. They played in the sand and jumped waves.

Aliza really enjoyed being in the water with Meghan. She likes to stand and let the waves knock her over. She also started to get the hang of boogie boarding. Anna was happy playing in the sand or doing cartwheels. She warmed up to the water after lunch.

I really meant it: Meghan is an awesome beach Aunt. She made the girls mermaid tails while I held sleeping baby.

I only had one moment where I almost cried. I was feeding Isaiah and the wind picked up our beach umbrella. It was blowing and almost to our neighbors, but Josiah caught it. Meghan was far enough away that I couldn't yell and the kids were looking at me like they had no clue what "Go get Meghan" meant. I heard a woman say "she has a baby" and a man appeared to rescue Josiah from being blown away with the umbrella. The man reset our umbrella and another lady offered the use of her mallet to get the pole deep enough it wouldn't blow away again. In the meantime I sat Isaiah on the beach chair so I could help with the pole and he face planted into the sand and started screaming. It was the only time he cried the whole time we were there. Meghan appeared. I recovered.

I'll watch the video of Josiah boogie boarding and look at the pictures a few times and I'll probably be ready to go again soon enough...I think. Next time, though, I think I'll leave Isaiah with Mom.