A Day at the Beach

We just got home tonight from several days at Emerald Isle with Nanny and Grampy. Here is a composite/aggregate picture of a day at the beach, version 33 years old with 2.8 kids:

5:45 a.m. One or both of the children wake up. Deliver children to Nanny and/or Grampy who are foolish enough to find them cute, even at 5:45 a.m. on vacation.

8:30 a.m. Kelly and I wake up, blessing Nanny and Grampy for being so deluded.

9:15 a.m. Begin process of lathering up 2.0 of the 2.8 children as well as all four adults. Somewhere between age 22 and 32, I developed into my mother's pasty-white skin. It takes me thirty minutes to rub in the spf 30 required to keep me looking as pale when I come back from the beach as I did when I arrived. I look forward to the days of wearing spf 60 and above later in life, a.k.a. "liquid shirt."

9:45 a.m. Arrive at beach. Begin to coax anxious/recalcitrant children into water. Zoe (18 months) clamors for "up" and clings to mom or dad like a tree frog. Davis (3 years) turns tails and flees at any point that the water gets within 50 feet of him.

10:15 a.m. Davis makes contact with water.

10:45 a.m. Zoe demands snack. We produce the requisite Goldfish, which are quickly encrusted with a lovely, sand coating. Kelly and I rationalize that she won't eat any vegetables, so she needs her roughage. Sand-coated Goldfish in place of veggies? Brilliant.

11:15 a.m. Begin to pack up children and all accessories. Realize that we should have started packing up 15 minutes earlier as children flail all the way back home.

11:45 a.m. Kids eat lunch in front of Mr. Rogers.

12:30 p.m. Kids go down for 1:00 nap.

12:33 p.m. Adults go down for 1:03 nap.

1:15 p.m. Davis begins to call out from his bedroom "cockle-doo-doo mama!" After brief consult we narrow our options to freeing the child from his room or putting the rooster out of our misery. We decide to free the child, reluctantly.

2:30 p.m. Zoe wakes up. Both children have inherited my mother's pasty-white skin, so we cannot return to the beach for several more hours. This means an afternoon of reading books, playing with Thomas trains we've brought from home, and/or watching t.v. We watch plenty of t.v.

5:00 p.m. Dinner time for kids: chicken nuggets, frozen veggies, cheese, bread, fruit. They eat nothing.

5:30 p.m. Back to the beach for a "walk." This chiefly consists of not bothering to change into swim trunks and/or lathering up with sunscreen. We go to the beach, sit in the sand, wade some in the water. Davis gets wet again. Zoe clamors for more sand-Goldfish delicacy.

6:30 p.m. Kids get bathed, adults throw dinner together.

7:00 p.m. Adults eat. Kids work the table like vultures to get scraps of food from adults' dinner plate.

7:30 p.m. Kids go down for 8:00 bed time.

8:00-11:00 p.m. Adults flip through hundreds of cable stations while reading books and scrap-booking.

Total time spent on the beach per day: approximately 2.5 hours. Memories that last a lifetime? Priceless...