A Trip to the Beach

Teddy starts Kindergarten in about three weeks and he said to me, “I start school in three weeks; I really hope I get to go back to the beach before then.” Now I was planning on taking them the next day, but I do my best not to tell them things in advance. I don’t want to deal with the over excitement for any longer than absolutely necessary. Teddy gets very excited when it comes to going to the beach, so much that when he knows he’s going he’s up at six, in his bathing suit by 6:05am and ready to leave by 6:15am. There’s no way that’s ever going to happen. The days we go to the state beach we leave early so we can sit closer to the water, but when we go with my family we go to a private beach and there’s not much of an issue of where to sit. So we don’t even leave the house until at least 10am, pure torture in Teddy’s world and in mine having to listen to “when are we going?

Unfortunately they really started to piss me off right before bedtime, big surprise they always piss me off right before bedtime, it’s like it’s their job or something, so I lost it and said, “That’s it! I’m going to the beach tomorrow and if you’re not going to listen, you’re going to stay home with Daddy.” The funny thing is they were with me when I went to the store and bought the food I only buy when we go to the beach and they didn’t figure it out when they kept asking if they could eat it when we got home and I would say, “We can’t eat that yet.” Really? Do I ever randomly buy chocolate chip cookies? No, because Daddy or I will eat them all.

We went to the beach and meet up with my family, that means there were 16 of us in our group, plenty of people for my kids to talk to besides me. Teddy loves the water and could spend the entire day in there. Last year he started to go out little too far so I drew a line on him with a Sharpie and told him he couldn’t go past that line without a grown up; brilliant idea on my part, now he doesn’t bug me every 7 minutes to go in the water. Maizie and Stella hardly go over their knees, but yesterday Maizie went out with my sister and got wet up to her neck. So just to see Teddy reaction I gave Maizie a line on her neck. Teddy’s reaction when he saw her line was priceless, we could see his mouth drop from where we sat and did he march his pissed off self up to me and question my marking decision. “IT’S ON HER NECK! IT’S HIGHER THAN MINE!  SHE MAY BE OLDER BUT I’M BIGGER” At this point my dad and I are laughing so hard we can hardly talk. Teddy stomped away back down the beach to Maizie, where he tried to get her into the water (where she had no intention of going back into for the rest of the day) and test out her line. Eventually he got tired of talking to that wall and just went back into the water. When my dad asked Teddy why he thought Maizie’s line was so high he said it was because she had on a bikini, way to convince yourself you weren’t getting jipped.

We stay at the beach until late afternoon and in order to get Teddy out of the water and not have to go back to the house with a dripping kid, I tell him that the sea lions come out at 4 o’clock. Teddy is afraid of sea lions, so much so that around 2:30pm he’ll start asking what time it is to make sure he’s not out in the water past 4 o’clock (sea lion feeding time). Now that it’s past four what is a five year old boy going to do with his remaining beach time? Roll around in the sand and cover every inch of his body, of course. Then he’ll stick his sandy ass hand into the bag of cheese balls and ruin them for everyone, but he can no longer go in the water and that’s the price we have to pay. This lasts for only an hour maximum because the kids are so tired their attitudes make me want to take them out to the sea lions myself (there are no sea lions but they don’t know that). So we pack it in and start our trek home where they get to fall asleep before we even get to the first traffic light.