A nearly-bonfire

Our last big bonfire on the beach was pre-Hurricane Katrina, and we had no kids, and it was fabulous. We've always wanted to do it again but we never quite organised ourselves to get a permit. So when Boone and Melissa invited us to theirs, we were keen.

Sadly, the wind and the weather were against us. It was warm all day at our place (and we live less than a minute's drive from the beach) so we were caught completely off-guard by how outrageously cold it was on the beach.


We were shivering as soon as we got there; getting blankets and moving closer and closer to the fire didn't help as much as you'd hope. In light of Berry's recent-and-ongoing sicknesses (and her freezing little clenched fists) we couldn't stay for long.

Berry got a cookie from Melissa before we left, though, so she counted the whole outing as a great success. We took her home and thawed her out, and we'll try the whole bonfire thing again soon. With bigger jackets.

Uh-oh!

We live about half a mile from the beach, and I've taken Berry there exactly once.

If you asked me why we'd never been in the four months we've lived here, I would've said it was because this particular beach wasn't good enough. (I'm a beach snob, I'll admit it. Australia will spoil you that way. "That's not a beach," I tell myself, "It's just where the land meets the Gulf of Mexico.")

But Berry showed me the real reason: beaches are fraught with danger and distress.

"Uh-oh!" she said as soon as I set her down on the sand. "Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Shoooooes."

Sand in her shoes. Right. She hopped from foot to foot.

Did she want to take off her shoes? No.
Did she want to brush the sand off her shoes? No.
Did she want mummy to take her shoes off and empty out the sand and brush off her feet and put them back on? Of course.

Berry's not a beach veteran. Although she's half-Australian, and although she's two years old, she's only been to two beaches in her whole life. Two. Polar opposites: beautiful but freezing Cannon Beach in Oregon, and the blindingly gorgeous Currumbin Beach in Australia.

So the beach down here was still a new and unsettling experience for her.
"Uh-oh!" The wind was blowing.

"Uh-oh!" There were bugs.

"Uh-oh!" A small breeze peppered us with sand.

"Uh-oh! Juuuuuuuice!" The ocean was juice. And it was very worrisome. She preferred not to walk in it.

We repeated the uh-oh about shoes and sand several times until I persuaded (cajoled, convinced) her to take them off altogether – an unprecedented step for my finicky toddler. She walked on careful tiptoes.

Eventually we sat in the sand (imagine!) and talked about Hello Kitty and birdies and juice, and made some very tiny sand castles with a very tiny bucket and spade, and pretended the bugs weren't there.

I think – I like to think – that by the time we left, I had a marginally less uptight two-year-old than the one I arrived with.

Time will tell.

Sailing

{Berry – in the orange lifejacket – and her new-best-friend Lily set up camp by the snacks. Clever girls.}

We went out on an old-style schooner in the Gulf of Mexico with a bunch of people from the hospital. I thought it was ambitious taking the kids along (Berry in particular, maybe!) but things went well till the last half-hour of the 2.5 hours. Boy oh boy was it hot and airless. Blazing sun and not a breath of wind for the sails. But we saw lots of dolphins (woohoo!) and met some great people who've just moved down here, like us.

Also, the pelicans made an effort to be picturesque...