The Beach

I know that you have all been losing sleep wondering whether the Holland family has made it to the beach this summer, as I have yet to blog about it. Well, I’m here to put your mind at ease. We have actually made it to the beach quite a bit (although, it was a slow start with bdays, trips, etc) – I have just forgotten to take my camera every single time up until this last weekend.

As you can imagine, our beach experience varies from year to year based on the kids’ ages. It’s hard for me to believe that just 5 years ago, we could actually get there whenever we wanted, stay as late as we wanted and the best treat? Lay there and do NOTHING. It was fabulous. Things these days are a bit different.

The summer of 2007 was not a good beach summer, as it consisted of either a) me attempting to nurse Avery while trying to also keep every single little piece of her skin out of the sun or b) Josh or I walking Avery around in the stroller to try to get her to stay asleep. And, because I'm feeling nostalgic talking about her when she was itty bitty....Here is the little stinker at 3 weeks old during her first trip to the beach and no, I wasn't lying - I had actually just nursed her to sleep before this picture ...

Summer of 2008? Much better. Avery was very content to just play with buckets of water, chew on rocks (large ones of course – don’t worry) and eat her lunch – calmly, peacefully. It was very nice.

Summer of 2009? Back to the nursing and the stroller, except this time with Alex. Not so much fun. Here he is at probably only 1 week old at the beach - I remember I could barely even walk because I was still recovering from the c-section, but we made it to the beach! Not sure if that was a really sick move or a really healthy move on my part????

Summer of 2010? Pretty similar to the Summer of 2008 except we have a 13 month old boy vs. a 13 month old girl. Alex isn’t simply content just playing with water or chewing on rocks. Alex needs to immediately dump the water all over Mommy’s blanket that, up until that point, I attempted to keep free of all sand and water. He also insists on not eating his lunch calmly and peacefully, but rather grabbing the little cups that his food is in and dumping black beans all over the blanket (that is now full of sand and water).

He also insists on crawling everywhere and picking up random little things that he probably shouldn’t be chewing on, but does.



And, after a hard day at the beach, he's pooped....


Actually, this is what happened just prior to that picture, but as you can see, he was loving this game of "let's push Alex down in the seat."

I will say that Alex is much better about going in the water than Avery ever was. In fact, it wasn’t until this year that Avery actually got in the water and enjoyed it. Alex, on the other hand, loves playing in the water and gets in it any chance he can get. I can see it now – Alex will be lifeguarding on Warren’s Point, diving into the water and saving lives, as Avery is doing her best impression of me by laying her butt on the beach and not doing a single thing. That’s my girl!