Jack at the Beach

Went to the beach with Jack today. Kate had a cold and cough so Emily stayed home with her. Here's how the trip went.

- Found a spot. Jack immediately wanted to bury me in the sand. I usually help him with this, otherwise it could take a while. He buried one leg while I scooped sand over the other. The way he did it, he used a little shovel to fill a bucket, which he then used to fill his dumptruck, which he then used to pour sand over me. Essentially he spent 5 minutes filling something he couldn't lift and then whacked me in the groin with a plastic dumptruck, as sand fell pitifully near my leg. Good times.

- We went down to the water. I pointed out how a guy was way out far but it was only up to his knees. We started off, walking out into the water. I was impressed by how game Jack was; I remember him being reluctant to go in, not so long ago. Perhaps when we lived in Colorado and he only saw the ocean on rare occasions - a trip to Mexico, basically.

- We played some games on the beach. One was "train," where I'd follow him and stop when he stopped. There was some "whoo-whooing." Another was "run from the seagulls." The seagulls had zero interest in us, but that didn't stop us from running madly for our seats, pretending to be statues, running for the water, running back to the beach, etc. Still another involved throwing shells into the water. Jack liked finding shells near where our towels were, running down to the water (a good ways from our towels), and heaving them in. We'd done this a few times when I pointed out there were a lot of shells right on the edge of the water. Thus, more time throwing, less time running back and forth. The game changed a little after that.

- Jack wore his wild, green patterned bathing suit and floppy blue hat. He looked like a little beachcomber. He ran on the beach oblivious to things like rocks and stuff that I know a year ago he would have gingerly walked around.

- We built a sand castle. It was pretty ugly. I'm a little out of practice, and Jack likes bringing more water than is necessary to create a moat. We built some towers that slowly crumbled into the moat. We used the shovels as flags in the collapsing towers. Then we kicked the whole thing over.

- We went to get food at the stand. Chicken nuggets, fries, burger. Jack danced around me while I waited in line. He was in a good mood. Ate lots of fries and nuggets, too.

- There was a lot of ketchup on Jack's face.

- We headed home and I gave Jack a ring pop from the cooler. He was pretty weary and nearly falling asleep as he sat in his car seat, wearing sunglasses and his floppy beach hat, noisily chomping the ring pop. Some of it didn't end up stuck to his sandy face.