Frollick and Play

So yesterday and today were in the hundreds of degrees and that means that at the coast it is nice and balmy. My Elliott must have sand in his blood, I think. He has such a passionate love for the beach. We haven't been able to go much this summer, it being northern California and all... I don't know if you know much about northern California beaches, but apparently they are usually pretty cold and overcast (and lots of sharks I think). But we were treated to perfect beach weather today. 106 degrees in Santa Rosa, but drive about 25 minutes to Dillon Beach and its perfect 70 degree weather with a nice ocean breeze.

I'm so proud of my boy, because he's usually pretty skittish when it comes to the water, but today he played hard in the surf for a good portion of the day--even after a big head dunking spill... And let us all give Caiden a big hand (or "mad props" as some might say) for her ability to not ingest too much sand. I could tell it was a real sacrifice on her part, so I'm grateful. (My friend's horse died from eating grass with sand underneath so all the sand he ingested eventually carved out a dent in his guts somewhere so that all the sand would get stuck in the depression and it eventually killed him.) She loved rolling around in the sand and crawling everywhere. She also loved the water...

I've been struggling with patience lately for this phase my 3 year is going through. It's a very loud and obnoxious phase. I love him to death, but when he's running through the house yelling non-stop (even when you ask him to) and loudly speaking jibbery non-sense (his way of talking to Caiden in baby talk) and picking on Caiden and making her scream, too, its all I can do to stay calm. Some of my friends ask me for advice on behavioral problems and I was thinking today... A good problem solver is to take these crazy cowboys and let them loose at the beach where the crashing of the waves on the shore will cover the noise of their shrill shrieks and screams and they can run, run, run, themselves ragged. Then you can go through a drive-thru somewhere, feed them, dunk them in the bath, and send them off to bed. And you can count on them getting up only once--okay, maybe twice--before they go to sleep... Then you can worry about fixing those attitude problems tomorrow. At least today was fun...

BEACH TIP: Always bring baby powder with you to the beach to get off all that sand. Works like a dream--painless sand remover. And/or airplane blankets work excellent for this as well.