The End. The Beginning?

Is Sunday the end or the beginning of the week? It's the first day on the calendar, but I always think of it as the end of the week.

When the baby woke from her nap this afternoon, I snatched her from her bed, changed her clothes, herded up the boys and off we went to the beach. My husband was at the church for the high school baccalaureate, so this was yet again a mother-only adventure.

I was disappointed to find the tide already coming back in, but we walked way out to the water anyway. Babygirl made a bee-line for the murky salt-water and might have walked it to her waist if I hadn't stopped her. She does not want to hold my hand anymore.

I had forgotten about seaweed, though. That stuff is slippery and slimy! I worried that Babygirl would slip and cut her hands on the barnacles. The boys immediately wandered away, eyes downcast, searching for sea creatures. I was so thrilled to find a star-fish clinging to a rock (I think they are officially called Sea Stars, but they will always be star-fishes to me!). YoungestBoy placed it in his bucket, and eventually had a little sea community in his yellow plastic pail. He also had a hermit crab, a sea slug, a shrimp, a crab, a dead jellyfish, and a moon snail collar. Alas, we did not find the elusive moon snail, but we did find a collar, which reminds me of an old tire. The moon snail lays eggs and mixes them with sand and mucus and this material is shaped into a large upside-down funnel, like the kind my grandmother used to put homemade pickles into jars.

Boys at the beach.  


We stayed for an hour, then finally, I coaxed the kids to return their creatures to the sea. The star-fish clung to the bottom of YoungestBoy's bucket, so I had to pry each little star-fish arm free. YoungestBoy cradled it for awhile and finally let it go.

I took pictures to document that, yes, the children have had a family outing. They did not spend every moment of childhood watching television and playing Nintendo. I have proof.

Babygirl has begun helping me unload the dishwasher. She likes to take the silverware out and put them into the drawer. Unfortunately, she doesn't care if they are dirty or clean, so the silverware situation is somewhat unsanitary at the moment. But at least she's interested. My boys have never shown any interest in the dishwasher, other than the time they put regular dishwashing liquid into it and I had a sudsy flood in the kitchen.

Babygirl also has a new obsession with buckling things. She sits in her booster seat, buckles up and then wants to be unbuckled so she can buckle up again. When we arrive at our destination in the car, she wants to be unbuckled so she can buckle up. Today, when we arrived home, I unbuckled her quickly, like a magician doing a magic trick faster than the human eye can see. When she realized she was unbuckled and about to be removed from the carseat and the beloved buckles, she turned and clung to the side of her seat. I tugged on her, just like I had tugged on that stubborn little star-fish in the bucket. Finally, I got her unstuck--much to her outrage--and carried her inside. Another successful Adventure completed.