Saturday, 4pm – We’ve
Arrived
It was a bit late to
set up and go down to the beach, particularly with needing to eat around 5:30
for the kiddos, so we unpacked and hung out in the house for a couple of
hours. The act of unpacking reminded me
of my bete noire: hot weather. See, the
older I get, the more convinced I am that I’m made for living in a climate that
rarely gets up to 80 degrees. When I was
in high school in Houston I drove a 1990 Volkswagen Vanagon that had no air
conditioning for two whole years without much thought, yet now I’ll start
sweating after walking around maybe five minutes in 90 degree heat with high
humidity. I can take cold weather fairly
well, not needing a jacket until it gets to 60 degrees or maybe 55 and not for
those late night trips to the backyard trash can or compost pile when it’s 30
degrees outside. So with it being about
90 and the humidity at 70%, I was sweating after the second trip back down the
stairs to the minivan to unload. By the
seventh trip, I was drenched and needing a shower. It’s not a problem when I’m doing something
where getting sweaty goes with the territory like working outside but when it
happens when it’s not supposed to, I hate it.
Hate it. I can’t imagine spending
a summer day at Astroworld like I did when I was a kid (and yes, I know Astroworld
closed years ago).
So of course I walked
around with no shirt on for 20 minutes.
We’re at the beach, rules kind of go out the window.
We stayed in for the
evening with my father-in-law grilling hamburgers. It’s funny how the roles shake out on these
trips. I found the house options online,
Jennifer and her Mom chose, I booked the travel, Jennifer and her parents
figured out who was bringing what, Jennifer got all of the kids’ stuff together
days in advance, I packed everything into the minivan on the morning of, I got
us to Port A, I picked up the keys to the house, Jennifer and her parents
settled everything in while I took three years to bring everything inside, my
father-in-law cooked and Jennifer and I took care of the kids and put them to
bed. Of course, when you have so many
relatives around, including one of Graham’s favorite women in the world after
Jennifer, my sister-in-law (I’ve been informed that I can call her that), you
never have to read Graham a book all weekend long.
Ah...night. How were Graham and Trevor going to do? We took the biggest bedroom in the house, a
spacious room with two twin beds. We
stuck Trevor’s playpen in the corner furthest away from the living room,
covered the two sides with beach towels and covered the windows with blackout
curtains and a beach towel. As for
Graham, we had the bright idea of sticking him in the double on the far wall,
letting Jennifer take the other double and have me sleep on the floor. I used to not be able to sleep on flat
surfaces...and then I became a parent.
I’m now able to sleep on hard carpet or hardwood floors with the best of
them if it is required to help get a kid to sleep in the middle of the night. Trevor went to sleep easily. Graham followed an hour or so later. Success!
But it couldn’t last, could it?
It couldn’t. Around 10:30, as we were getting ready to go
to bed ourselves, I snuck into the bedroom to make sure Trevor was ok. I was able to see Trevor peek his head up
over the edge of the bed Abominable Snowbeast-style right before I heard a very
loud thump, followed by extremely loud crying.
Graham had rolled right off the bed and bonked his head on the floor! Oh man!
I picked him up and quickly took him into the living room to be
comforted by Jennifer. I had horrible
memories of the one time I rolled off a bed when I was a kid (1986 in my
grandmother’s apartment in Charlotte, NC) and I was just imagining him being
traumatized for life like I was. I
usually don’t go into uber-parent mode but this was one of those times. Anyway, Jennifer got Trevor back to sleep and
eventually Graham calmed down as well, going back to sleep soon
thereafter. And of course, he didn’t
even remember any of it in the morning.
About the Abonimable
Snowbeast. Remember the old Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special?
And remember how the first sighting of the Abonimable Snowbeast shows
him peaking up over the mountains? Yeah,
that’s what Trevor peeking over the top of the playpen reminds us of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5rON78idQY
At some point during
the night Graham ended up sleeping with me.
The night ended with me sleeping on the floor.
The next morning, while
everyone else slept, Jennifer, Graham, Trevor and Maisy the Psycho Pooch went
for a walk. At 6:15am. At least we got to see the sun rise and it
wasn’t quite hot enough yet to break a sweat.
I think the day that Jennifer and I can sleep past 7am on a weekend
morning is the day we stay indoors all day eating nothing but pizza and
watching Duck Tales and Jane Austen marathons.
We tried to get to the beach but were thwarted by a boardwalk guarded by
a sign threatening to call the police if you weren’t a resident of that
neighborhood. We turned around and went
back to the house. Luckily Graham wasn’t
too put out about it. He had felt a
little cheated though when we didn’t go to the beach yesterday afternoon (a
mistake I will not make a second time...the beach is the beach!).
Everybody else got up
around seven and we all had a nice little breakfast. Graham quickly got impatient to go visit the
beach while we were still getting prepped but luckily he became occupied with,
what else, a big pile of sand in the yard.
Awesome.
And then, around 9:30,
we loaded up the minivan and my in-laws’ Ford Escape and drove over to the
beach. Jennifer remained at the house
since Trevor was taking his morning nap.
Of course, that would give her some nice time to herself. Graham of course was raring to go. Me too Graham, me too.
The Port A beaches are
much better than Galveston in that you can park your car right on the beach,
walk thirty yards to the water’s edge and you’re in. No seawall, no major artery right beyond the
beach with cars honking and music blasting.
The water is still brown (though not Galveston brown) but hey, not all
beaches can be Florida beaches. The
water temperature is cool but not Hill Country cold, meaning it feels good
about five seconds after you jump in.
A great innovation in
beachgoing I think is the large canopy.
I remember going to the beach in Galveston as a kid and having no shade
to speak of, just a few blankets spread out on the sand with our stuff. Sure, the sun is an integral part of the
beach but it can get uber-hot and you just want some shade. Well now you can get fold-up canopies that
have enough shade for ten people to sit comfortably underneath. My awesome in-laws brought theirs, allowing
us to have a nice cool home base to operate out of and allowing those not
getting in the water or playing in the sand to watch the goings-on in
comfort.
Graham’s favorite
activities, were, in no particular order:
-
Standing in knee-deep water and slapping the
incoming waves with his hands
-
Digging holes in the sand deep enough for him to
hide in (having been advised by a co-worker to bring a good shovel, I brought a
garden trowel)
-
Digging holes in the mud deep enough for Uncle
Andrew to ‘take a bath’ in
-
Covering up my legs and arms with wet sand
When you’re in Port A,
watch out for the grackles. While no one
was under the canopy, one snuck in, pulled a Clif Bar out of a bag, pecked open
the corner and started eating it. Crazy.
Jennifer called us at
10:30 to let us know that Trevor was up.
I drove back to the house, picked them up and came back so that the Tike
could get his first taste of the beach. Unfortunately,
when he touched the sand for the first time, he cried. Yeah, he cried. Before too long he’d gotten used to it though
and was crawling around in the surf without any problems. He’s pretty interested in everything and I
think he just thought it was a neat new brown place he hadn’t been.
Jennifer made the
mistake of feeding the gulls with bread.
Yeah, I know you’re not supposed to do that but it was going to be too
much fun not to try. I watched while
they stepped out to do it. At first, no
gulls took notice of them which was pretty funny. Then, after fifteen seconds or so, one came
flying over. Five seconds after that, it
turned into a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Jennifer threw up the rest of the bread as she was walking away from the
pack. They hung around for at least five
minutes after, spaced out in a perimeter around the canopy, waiting for
more. It would have been spooky except
that they were Laughing Gulls.
Jennifer’s parents
brought back a sandwich lunch and we all ate lunch IN THE SHADE OF THE CANOPY
(love that thing!). By that time Graham
was getting pretty tired as was Trevor.
Jennifer and I took them both back to the house to see about getting
them to nap. The Tike went down like a
champ but Graham, who is past having regular afternoon naps, decided to fight
through it and stay up. He was no match
for the minivan, however, as he fell asleep when Jennifer and her dad drove
down to Wal-Mart to find a potty seat.
Yeah, we hadn’t brought one and Graham refused to go without it.
Unfortunately for him
though, we didn’t take him back to the beach that afternoon. In retrospect, I should have taken him. After all, we only get down there once a
year. However, it might not have been
the greatest idea since Jennifer’s Mom and Graham’s Uncle Andrew were stung by
jellyfish during the afternoon; apparently everyone got out of the water for a
while once the jellies started floating in.
The sunburn count wasn’t
so good either. Jennifer had it on her
back, Graham under his eyes (who knew I had to put sunscreen there!) and
Jennifer’s mom had it on her legs.
For dinner, we drove
into town to eat some seafood. We
settled into a cozy but tight restaurant that thankfully, through the constant
movement of waitstaff and customers, held Trevor’s attention the whole
dinner. When Graham wasn’t eating his
food, a game of musical chairs began so that I could be next to him but then he
could be next to Aunt Erin. Finally Aunt
Erin ended up sitting between Trevor and Graham, perhaps the worst spot in the
restaurant. Oh well, the food was quite
excellent as we celebrated my father-in-law’s birthday.
After dinner, Jennifer
put Trevor down while Graham, Uncle Andrew, Aunt Erin and Maisy the Needy Pooch
took a walk to the beach. We cut across
a lawn and used a private neighborhood boardwalk to get there but oh well. I was glad to give Graham another opportunity
to be at the beach even though, um, we hadn’t put on swimsuits. So of course Graham immediately runs for the
water and frolicks in the wet sand. Oh
well. Maisy and I joined in ourselves,
running around in the waves and chasing Laughing Gulls. I wanted to release Maisy and see what she’d
do, especially since few people were out, it being sundown and all, but I was
afraid she wouldn’t turn around until she’d reached the Mexico border. Here’s a photo:
We returned to the
house all wet and sandy but I felt like a good parent, indulging my son in a
bonus run to the beach. Again, we only
make it down once a year. Graham was so
tired that he put himself to bed (after Aunt Erin read him four books, of course).
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