Another Day at the Beach

Here our some of my favorite pictures of our second day down on the beach.

Phaedra and Eleanor were both excited to wear hats on the beach. Phaedra could hardly see out from under hers.

We brought buckets and shovels to use, but one of the buckets got broken on the first day. Grant did some hunting around the beach house and found another. He also found a shovel that was different from ours, and let the girls bring it down to the beach. Rookie mistake. I know better than to let the girls play with something one of a kind when there is the option of an identical pair instead. The squabbles that arose over that shovel were fuuuun.

Watch as Eleanor makes an attempt at the coveted shovel and gets denied: 

 (The shovel is behind Phaedra in this one.)

. . . and Eleanor pouts.

Phaedra realized how useful her pockets were for storing treasures.

The tide was out pretty far, so Grant carried Phae out to look at some of the tide pools down by the point.  Eleanor didn’t mind being by the water down by the point because it was much more still, not undulating with the terrifying tide.  

At least she doesn’t mind getting wet or dirty.

Grant went around the point and brought back some agates for the girls. Phaedra loved hiding hers in the sand and then retrieving them. She’d grab a handful of sand surrounding her agate.

Then she’d toss it down. My teeny little girl next to the great, big ocean. She kept saying “owl” when she was talking to us about the ocean. She couldn’t remember the word most of the time, so she would beg to go to the owl. On the way back, Phaedra and I played a little game. I brushed a bit of sand off her jacket when I picked her up. Thinking to return the favor, she brushed at my jacket with her hand. Since her hand was caked in sand, rubbing it against my jacket just sent sand flying everywhere, into my eyes and mouth. I sputtered and brushed at my face. She laughed and did it again. I sputtered. We laughed. She did it again.   Then we pretended we were going to attack Daddy.

Good times.

Irrational Fears

Seriously.

Is it only my four year old who does this?

She decides to be afraid of the most random things. Sometimes, I don’t know if she actually is afraid of things or if she just wants to try to control a situation. We’ve dealt with all types of fears. She has spent periods of time afraid of the classics, such as dark or monsters, but she also has been afraid of silly things such as the vacuum, popping balloons, public toilets, even sticks of gum (while chiclet style gum remained perfectly acceptable). I don’t want to sound insensitive. Most of them are understandable, and I’ve worked with her. The public potty fear was one of the most challenging and frustrating. Now we have a new one, one that is really disappointing. I hope it will go away quickly.

These pictures were taken the second day we went down on the beach. Apparently, while we were on the beach the day before, the girls were playing in the sand right at the edge of the waves. Grant saw a wave coming that was going to get them, and he yelled for them to hurry and move. They got wet up to their ankles, knees maybe, and everything was fine. But apparently, the alarm in her dad’s voice set something off in Eleanor’s mind. Combine that with some conversations she had with her daddy about the tide coming in, and Eleanor developed a new irrational fear. She was afraid of the tide.

The whole time we were down there, she wanted to walk along the beach in the dry sand where all the junk gets deposited. We wanted to walk in the wet, firm sand that is closer to the water. Whenever we tried to convince her to come closer to the water, she would shriek and cry and throw a fit. She’d walk along with us, having a regular conniption of panic every few seconds, telling us the tide was going to get her. All this would happen when we were some 20 feet away from the water!

When I took those pictures, she had been playing happily in the sand for a while when she remembered she was afraid. She ran to me (toward the water, because she had originally been very far away from the water) to fuss about it and tell me how scared she was. The whole time, she was fretting and begging to go up the beach or back to the beach house. We tried to console her and explain how safe she was until we were blue in the face. No matter what we said or did, she could not be convinced.

See my problem? I don’t know if she’ll get over it, or if she’ll still act like this the next time we go to the beach. This is my girl who, just a few years ago, dragged us down to the waves and couldn’t wait to get wet. Now, she can hardly stand to be on the beach. What am I going to do with this kid?!

At The Beach

Well, I knew it would take me forever to get around to posting about our beach trip (two weeks ago). I always have so many pictures I want to post and so much I want to remember that it gets overwhelming to try to edit. In the end, I cut out very little because this blog is mostly a way for me to keep track of photos and memories I like best, and if I bore my readers, they can choose not to read. But I hope they don’t. I hope they leave stacks of comments on each and every post. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Grant found out at the last minute that he was going to be able to take Friday off of work that week, so we scampered to get things packed and left after dinner on Thursday. I had been counting down the “sleeps” for Eleanor so she would know when the much-awaited beach trip would arrive. Just like that, one more sleep became none, and we were out of here. I love the way she acts when we first get to the beach house. This time, she went right up the stairs and hollered, “My bed! My bed! It’s still here!” I guess there was no question where we were going to put the kids. She came down the stairs, still completely excited, and said over and over, “This is just what I’ve always wanted!”

We got there pretty late, so we didn’t go down to the beach until the next morning. The girls were so excited to get on the beach.

The weather was gorgeous for our whole trip. The clouds shielded us from the sun while we stayed fairly warm, and there was only a light breeze. Only once did it rain on us on the beach. We walked out from under the rain cloud, and by the time we made our way back down the beach, it was long gone. The only other time it rained was in the evening when we were already worn out and ready to curl up with a good book anyway.

Anxious to get on the beach.

Phaedra calls it work, or “wug,” by her pronunciation to play in the sand. She always begs to work when she sees the sandbox in our back yard or at Studio Grandma’s. I think she was very impressed to see that there was an endless amount of work to be done on the beach.

Daddy built a cool bridge in the sand for the girls.

Eleanor must have thought his work was incomplete. So much for that bridge.

Phaedra followed her daddy out to see the ocean. My, how she loved the freedom of the beach. She could wander all over the place without having to hold someone’s hand. She was finally able to taste some independence!

Feeling the water on her feet.

I should have gotten closer for these, but I was afraid to stray too far from Eleanor, who was still playing happily in the sand.

Burying their feet in the soggy sand.

And pulling out a foot, now covered in sand.

I turned to find that Eleanor must have thought I did wander too far from her.

She liked playing in the soggy sand just as well.

I made Grant hold the camera for a bit so I could play with my girls. That’s “the point” behind us. Don’t you love it? I think that beach is so gorgeous. It soothes the soul.

Note the sand on Eleanor’s face and Phaedra’s adorable curiosity.  

 

I love how Phaedra’s feet sort-of mirror her daddy’s in this one.

Playing on the rocks. She kept trying to pick up rocks that were way too big or halfway buried.

Then she messed her pants.

And we went back to the beach house.

That was day one on the beach. More to come.

Hurting Our Ears

At lunch today, Phaedra was singing random gobbledy-gook at the top of her lungs. Eleanor started to complain. “Mommy, she’s hurting my ears.” I explained to Eleanor that there were plenty of times she herself hurt our ears with her loud singing, and Phaedra had probably learned it from her.

Grant chimed in to mention that the singing was cute, and we didn’t want to ask her to stop.

Just at that moment, Phaedra’s babble changed to sing the words, “Me . . . Hurting . . . Ears!”

It was an adorable song.

Surprise for Daddy

Before Grant left for San Francisco, I was able to surprise him with a project I finished just in time. I made him this bag to put his toiletries in for the trip: 

Mmmmmm, Eternity. That stuff melts my butter.

This project was (don’t laugh) my first zipper ever! I’ve really only done very basic sewing projects, and none of them have yet included a zipper. It really wasn’t too difficult. I think I’m getting a bit braver when it comes to new projects. Little projects like this are nice because it’s so little fabric, it doesn’t cost me way too much if I totally ruin it. I was really pleased with my accomplishment.

I was amazed that I had been able to keep it a secret. Eleanor worked with me every step of the way, buying the materials, cutting fabric, and sewing it together. I just kept telling her it was going to be a surprise, so she shouldn’t tell Daddy about it. She didn’t slip up once (that I know of). She can be pretty tight-lipped when she wants to.

For anyone interested, I found the tutorial for this bag HERE. I read some of the comments and found that it’s even easier if you just sew the entire side instead of the middle third on step 4.

Grant really liked it, and he said it was useful to have on his trip. It was a fun, easy project to do. I might have to go back and make another that I can use to hold my spools of thread.