Vacation Breakdown

Vacation was over more than a week ago so if i don't get this written now, i'll forget the details myself. And the whole purpose of the post is to help me remember what our beach vacation was like with a 2 and 4 year old.

Heading to the same beach, at the same house each summer affords us the chance to use our vacation as a method of marking the growth in our kids just like making marks on the closet for our kids height. Each year when it's time to take a new measurement you can't believe how much your kids have grown.

So to help us compare summers, here's how our days generally went at the beach this year.

The boys typically woke up between 7 and 7:45 each morning JT would get up with them, make them breakfast and they'd run around, cause mayhem and wait until they could come wake me up. That happened somewhere between 7:45 and 8:00 most mornings. Other mornings i got up when they did, headed to the pool or out on a run before the day got to hot.

Between 8 and 8:30 the rest of our family would be downstairs, eating breakfast, and deciding on the day's activities. If it was the beach we'd pack the cooler, our beach bag and then spent the better part of the next hour getting the kids into bathing suits, surf shirts and slathered with sunscreen. Usually another 15-20 minutes finding and putting on shoes and loading into the cars. We followed a similar schedule for the pool although every few days you had to factor in Silas' meltdowns into the am schedule. Sometimes they just made things take longer and sometimes they debilitated plans.


We'd leave the beach or pool by about 12:15-12:30, get them washed off in the outside shower (which Silas became obsessed with), while JT made them lunch which they ate in the screened in porch-- or "ousside" as Silas proclaimed. Then into dry clothes and off to naps. Most days Henry napped for a few good hours, although Silas' naps were often fairly short.

Some afternoons we hit either the pool or the beach depending on what we had done in the morning. Others we just played around the house, went on bike rides in the trailer or tried to fit in other activities-- croquet, the sprinkler, baseball game, etc. The boys went to bed late most nights-- close to 8:30.


Silas got to where he liked playing quite a bit on the steps of the pool and having me swim him around in the water of the pool-- only after the first few days when he refused loudly to go near the water. Henry wore his life vest or swim ring and spent all the time he could in the pool and asked to go into the ocean with us whenever possible. Some days the waves were too big and then he ran in and out of the water and discovered making sandcastles down by the water-- thus ending our time being able to hunker down under the umbrella.


We've hit a minor league team -- the Shorebirds-- game each year and this year was Silas' first time in attendance. He loved the mascot, Sherman and spent the entire night asking where "that guy" had gone. Henry continued to love Sherman as well and this year even took a picture with him. Note the distance in last year's picture.

I plan to post more about Silas latest phase--which is a difficult one. But this should give us a pretty clear idea of what the beach vacation was like if we're lucky enough to get to go again next year!

Vacation Update

We're somewhere past the mid-way point of our annual vacation to Bethany Beach, DE. Henry is enjoying his 5th beach vacation and this is Silas'. Each one has been a little different and a little better. I think last year was the turning point with both boys sleeping normally through the night and not waking up at 6 am. Although this year has had some downs (Silas' crazy homesickness and tantrums, my sinus infection, lots of mosquitos) i think they've primarily been overrun by all the fun we've had at the beach, the pool, the park, and hauling the boys around in the bike trailer.

It's pretty fun seeing what the boys are like each year while we're here. Last year Silas was just learning to walk and Henry was pretty cautious at both the pool and at the beach. This year Silas is of course EVERYWHERE, running like a banshee, cautious but making huge progress at the pool and small progress at the beach and Henry is progressing towards fish status. In the pool Henry wears his swim vest and paddles over the whole pool, working on keeping his legs straight while he kicks. He wants to spend the biggest part of our time at the beach running in and out of the water and has been in swimming several days with myself or JT. Silas wants to go "see" the water now a few times an outing, but absolutely, positively does not want his feet or any other part of his body to touch the water. I think we have moved past the waves being "too loud," although he does still ask why they are loud.

JT and i are loving things too. We've celebrated our ninth anniversary (technically July 2nd, but we postponed our celebration until we were on vacation and had plenty of time to chill, read and talk to each other-- once JT and my Dad finished Halo. I'm doing the sprint triathlon two weeks from now so i've been exercising quite a bit each day and loving having the time (and backup) to do it. I tested out my wet suit, which fits and i managed to get it off and on, although the jellyfish in the water freaked me out and cut my ocean swim short.