• Beach Bits

    My Love Affair with the Beach

    Baby Bug better not grow up to be afraid of the waves like I am. I was so proud when I received her fake birth certificate (her real one is still tied up in red tape somewhere) and it said she was born in “Beachtown, USA”. How cool is that? She’s going to be the real deal beach baby like I always wished I was.

    I was born in an ocean town too but it was more of a harbor and a pier kind of a town. Nothing like the sun and sand we enjoy here. If my mom ever took me to the beach, she’d probably have to dress me in a snowsuit and cover my face with a receiving blanket to protect me from the wind. In fact, I don’t have any real memories of that ocean other than stinky fish at the wharf. It’s funny the things you remember from childhood.

    When I was five, we moved from northern California to southern. I had a lot of ear infections in that damp dank beach town and finally my parents got tired of expensive trips to the hospital for ear surgeries so they picked us up moved us all the way down to southern California where the air is so dry the only way you could ever get an ear infection is if you went swimming all day long in a pool. Even that was hard to get but I managed a few times. Nothing like the trouble I had up north though.

    I think it was about 110 that summer we moved. It was such a shock. Everything was hot and there were no trees. Just decomposed granite and fire ants. I had never seen fire ants before so the first thing I did was go outside and stomp on them. Boy, did I learn a lesson. Fire ants are so mean. If you stomp on just one, they call in all their relatives and next thing you know your leg is getting chewed off by tiny little teeth secreting acid. That was fun.

    After we moved to the desert we didn’t go to the beach much. Maybe once a year. It was a big deal. You had to pack up your whole car with every possible thing you could need (coolers, hot dogs, vats of iced tea) and then drive an hour an a half to get there. My brother and I would be so excited as we drove and drove and drove to get there. Then just as we reached the last hill before you get your first glimpse of the blue ocean, we would hit a wall of fog. What the —?!! Where was the fun in the sun? The waving palm trees? The sailboats and surfers? What a disappointment. Here it was screaming hot all the way from home to the beach and once we got there it was just mucky gray stuff. What a drag.

    Of course that didn’t happen every time. Sometimes it was hot and sunny and we’d come home with blistering sunburns. I mostly remember the trips in my early teens when I developed a very strong dislike of the feeling of dried ocean water and sand on my skin. Those must have been the years when we didn’t have air conditioning in the car because I remember practically trying to crawl right out of my skin from sand irritation. I hated the beach. Sand and grit and big waves that knocked you over and rolled you around like you were strawberries in a blender.

    Then I hit high school and like every other teenaged girl, I fell under the spell of the “surfer boy”. The tan shoulders, the bleached out crispy hair, the crusty leather flip flops, the endless games of volleyball… I was a sucker. I tried every trick in the book to get my parents to take me to the beach. Then once I learned to drive, I took my rusty old truck out there every chance I got.

    Unfortunately, I never really realized my dream of being a surfer boy’s girlfriend. I just attempted. I tried to learn to surf and I hated it. All I ever learned was how to get water and sand up my nose. The waves were out to get me. Sometimes I’d swim out past the waves and that was glorious. The feeling of endless fathoms of space beneath you and above you. The funny tickling of sea weed or…. maybe a shark! But then you’d have to swim back in and that was the most frightening feeling ever. There is nothing worse than that feeling that there is something behind you and when you look over your shoulder to see what it is, you see a fifty foot wave about to crash on your head and pulverize your bones into little pieces of sand. That is what sand is made of you know, little bits of bone. I still have never gotten over that fear.

    Then I met Toby. He tried his best to help me conquer my fears… but nothing really helped. He used to go surfing every day back then. Body surfing which is technically not as cool as real surfing. (Insert rolling eyes here.) I finally met my surfer boy, sort of. But of course by then I’d developed a bunch of other fears, like being seen in a bikini. I wish I could go back in time and punch my old self in the face. What was I so afraid of? That someone might see a little dimple on the back of my knees? Sheesh.

    I’d kill to go back in time and have that body all over again. Not that I’m complaining. I know I have a lot to be thankful for still. I’m just saying that those were the years that I spoiled all my beach fun by worrying about stupid things like how my leg might look if I let it relax on the towel instead of being held taut at a perfect three inches above the towel. The stupidity! So many fun days at the beach wasted by the little voices in my head.

    So now I live at the beach and I’m slowly getting over all my past baggage. My relationship with the beach has matured and developed into a deeper love. Every day Baby Bug and I take a walk down to the beach and we look at the ever changing colors of the water and the sand. I think I have finally gotten past myself and all my silliness and now I love the beach for it’s beauty and sheer awesomeness. I love the sense of space I feel. It’s that feeling that nobody will ever crowd me any further than this because the ocean is always there and there is always space and clean-ish smelling air to breath. I love the ocean. I love the beach. I would be lost without them.

    Now I’m ready to start all over again with Baby Bug

  • Bug

    excuses, excuses…

    Doesn’t it always seem like bloggers are apologizing for lack of blogging or maybe they’re like me and they’re feeling guilty for the lack of quality blogging? So then you take a break and two weeks go by and you miss blogging like you miss your purse when you’ve left it behind accidentally. It’s that feeling like there’s something missing. I feel nice and carefree but I’m missing my purse. What if I need my keys or my lip gloss or my money! So you go back to your blog and you bang out a couple great posts and the blog continues year after year after year through mediocrity and the rare occasional great post…

    Does that mean that these last few weeks have been mediocre? Yikes no! There is so much going on with Baby Bug right now, I think my life is finally eclipsing my need to record it. That is a pretty big statement for someone who’s kept a diary religiously since age twelve. (Except I think I’ve said it before, so whatever.)

    Oh the things that she is doing lately! I could ramble on and on and on. Now it all makes sense why kidless people hate to hang out with people with kids. The rambling we do is endless! I hear myself passing social cue after social cue that I’ve said enough and it really is time to get off the phone but I just ramble on and on and on until I hear snores or a dial tone. When I meet another parent it’s like instantly I’m having a contest to see who can tell the most stories about their kid. “Oh yeah? Your kid does that? Well my kid does this and this and this and this!” And on and on we go.

    Just like me. On and on and on I go not really getting to the point of this blog post at all which IS: I’m feeling bad for not being brilliant lately.

    That said, I do need to chronicle some of the amazing things that Baby Bug has been doing. Some things are so amazing that only a movie could do them justice. I have been taking movies too but I can’t process them until I clear my hard drive of fifty zillion digital photos. I take about 100 photos a day. My computer is choking. I am stuck in Archiving Land. Burn baby burn.

    In the meantime here are some Baby Bug achievements:

    That two weeks of nothing but grunts has finally ended and now she is babbling! Lovely vowels sounds echo from one end of our house to the other. The great thing is that Toby seems to speak her language and they babble to each other will all kinds of sounds and raspberry splutters. I have a really good movie of that but again, I need to back up my photos first.

    She’s also starting to play by herself. It’s the BEST. I put the exersaucer out on our patio yesterday because it’s been so nice and warm lately. She spent nearly twenty minutes talking to the palm fronds that were blowing in the breeze. She also had a long conversation with the geraniums. Her favorite toy is an empty water bottle. She’ll bat that around her exersaucer for many many minutes and then when she’s done, she’ll gum it for another round. Remember how I said the best toys are free. It’s totally true.

    Finally she’s taking long naps again. Sometimes as long as two whole hours. It’s heavenly. I’m actually getting things done. But I can’t exactly plan around her long naps. Sometimes she likes to trick me and only take quick fifteen minute naps. She keeps me on my toes. Like right now as I try to type this. It’s taking me two hours longer to type an average post just because I have to stop every minute or so and put my hand in the bugaboo and calm her back down. She thinks she can’t take a nap by herself because every once in a while I take a nap with her. She’s so fun to cuddle with and I love taking naps with her but I sometimes I like to get things done. Plus, I want her to learn how to fall asleep by herself.

    I struggle and struggle with all these rules I make up for myself as a parent. To nap with her or not nap with her. To put her in her crib or let her fall asleep where she drops… I am constantly at battle with myself over what my instinct tells me to do and what my brain tells me I should do to be consistent. Consistency is so important but it’s also so elusive. I’m definitely learning that it’s okay to roll with things though. You just can’t be too rigid about things. Babies love to throw unknown variables at you.

    The biggest news I have is that she likes rice cereal. Boy, do I have a movie to show you about that! If you like chubby cheeks and little baby lips covered in ooey gooey messy stuff then you’re going to love this messy messy messy baby face movie. She’s so funny slobbering all over the spoon and spitting half of the cereal back out so that she can slobber it all over her fist and the exersaucer and anything else that happens to come into contact with her.

    Well I better wrap this up. She still has not fallen asleep. But she’s quiet. Who knows how long that will last.