Cute family picture, right?
You have no idea what it took to get it.
I got an education in traveling with a nine month old this past week. It makes me marvel at the moms out there with more than one kid who always know where the Cheerios are located in the minivan for when someone gets snacky because unlike them, we were an absolute mess.
After cramming the trunk and backseat with Baby Boy's high chair, formula, baby water, pack n' play, toys, beach umbrella, baby pool, clothes, floats, and dipes, there was no room for our laundry basket of towels and clean linens and we were already late leaving to beat the traffic to the beaches at Nags Head, so I hissed at Dan, "Just dump it on my lap!" He stacked the towels on me and I endured the six and a half hour trip with my head perched on top of the stack and my cranky baby bellowing in the back. He refused to nap and I had to wrench my arm behind my seat to give him nips of the bottle when the traffic was too heavy to pull over. He just chewed on it (#teethingproblems) and refused to drink and then shrieked a few minutes later because he was hungry.
We pulled over for diaper changes. The first one, it took us twenty minutes to find the wipes and then Coleson flailed, smearing his foot in his dirty diaper, so I lugged him to the ladies room to soap it down.
When we arrived at our beach house, I snapped into, "Time to make memories!" mode. Let's all go on Coleson's first trip to the beach! I had my fancy DSLR camera slung over my shoulder. My mission was to capture our first family picture with the waves as a backdrop; oh, and maybe a cute one of Coleson trying to shovel sand in his mouth. I plopped Coleson on the towel and scooped up some of the powdery sand, letting it escape through my fingers so that he could watch it cascade down.
Coleson just gasped and whined. I made my voice go higher, all, "Look! Buddy Boy, this is sand! Isn't the sand so sooofft??" Smelling my desperation to make this moment a memory, he began to bawl. Still determined, I scooped him up, trilling, "Let's go see the ocean! The ocean! The ocean!", but his bunchy swim diaper shifted slightly. Coleson pissed at the same time so that it ran down his leg and left a wet baby bum print on my shirt., a metaphor for how he felt about the whole experience, if you ask me.
I somehow had forgotten to pack wipes or a replacement outfit, so I had to strip him down, put on a fresh dipe, and wrap him in a towel. He kicked and screamed when I changed him, making sand shift onto the towel and stick to places where sand should never be. I tried to clean him up with a water bottle bidet action.
He liked looking out at the waves, but we soon realized that he despised being on a towel. And being hot. And wearing his sunhat or sunglasses. And getting lotioned up with baby sunscreen. which I smeared on despite his cries of agony And more than anything, touching sand. That meant we all took turns trying to snap him out of his funky mood, especially his Grampy who gave A+ quality entertainment.
The next day, Dan and I did some troubleshooting of the whole experience and reasoned that Buddy Boy must have just been tired the previous day and that we needed to time the beach time with his naps. That, and we needed to make him more comfortable by bringing a TON of shit with us. A bib, spoon, and a jar of peaches for snacking. A giant comforter so he wouldn't have to touch the sand. A beach umbrella so he wouldn't get hot. Teething toys to soothe his gums. A chair for me. Baby sunscreen. A baby hat with SPF. A change of clothes in case we had the same situation as the previous day.
Within ten minutes of arriving...
* I searched for the peaches and had to walk back to the beach house to get them off the kitchen counter.
* A gust of wind blew the umbrella inside out and Coleson shrieked.
* Then, I tried to feed our screaming baby and he knocked the peaches all over me and the comforter.
* He dropped the teether on the blanket and it was coated with sand (his kryptonite, apparently)
* The only thing to stop him from sobbing was walking him near the waves
In short, it was a complete sitcom, and we gave up after twenty minutes and went back to the beach house where Coleson munched victoriously on a piece of celery.
Baby: 2
Parents: 0
It's a good thing we had his beloved Mimi and Grampy and Auntie with us this week. They helped keep us sane.
His auntie even bought him this adorable turtle float, which he ended up loving. Turns out our non-beach bum is a total water baby!
We, of course, swooped in to try to take our perfect family photo once again, trying everything to get him to look at the camera:
He wasn't having it.
