A big day for the little boy. It was his first trip to the ocean, meaning his first look at the ocean, his first playing in the surf, his first sandcastle, etc. And he ended the day by taking his first bath alone in the tub.
In the morning, as Carly and I got ready to go, he went in with Cherie while she dried her hair. She saw a hair on the floor and opened the cabinet and put it in the garbage. He spent the next several minutes mimicking her, picking things up off the floor, opening the door, and throwing them away.
We targeted to leave at 9am and, miraculously, we were on the road a few minutes before that. August did a lot of waving and saying of bye bye to Cherie before we left, and immediately started acting tired – rubbing his eyes and yawning and doing some crying – but he never fell asleep. Instead, he just relaxed and looked out the windows much of the way there. I was actually able to get some reading done.
When we got to Ocean Shores we first went to the state park. We stopped at a picnic table and ate lunch, then went to the bathroom. We then walked down to the beach. It is a longish walk down and I was holding August in my arms. As we approached the ocean he started pointing out at the waves. It was his first glimpse of the ocean.
First, we played in the sand. Carly first drew lines in it, then we were scooping it into buckets. After a few minutes of this, we walked into the surf. This is where August got really excited. After the first wave hit he immediately asked for more and started walking out towards the water. We continued to play at the beach there for a good half hour. Finally, he was probably getting tired as he started to wave to the ocean and say ‘bye bye’. So we packed up, walked back to the car, and changed him in the shade of a bush before driving away.
We drove into town and found a coffee shop, Coastal Grounds. Carly nursed him in the car, then I put him in the carrier. He didn’t make a peep during the transfer. We each got a coffee and sat on a couch in the back. I read the McPhee book, Annals of a Former World, that I borrowed from Steve and Claremay. When he woke up an hour later he played in the coffee shop for a couple minutes, then we headed to Point Brown/the North Jetty. There, we mainly played in the sand. Only this time we used the buckets to make sand castles. August found this amazing, although after getting excited about each one he would immediately destroy it. August and I then went and played in the surf and Carly made a big sand castle, complete with a moat that started to fill with water as the tide came in. August learned what ‘seaweed’, ‘jelly fish’, ‘feather’, and ‘shell’ are, and would do his pointing thing where he would point to one, I would say the name, he would point to another, etc.
We put August in the carrier and walked over to the jetty to look into Grays Harbor. We then turned around and walked along the beach, headed north. We saw a piece of wood covered with moving…things… that August – all of us – were fascinated by. We turned around and walked back and finished our walk as Carly’s sandcastle was entirely swept away.
We tried to go to the Oyhut Wildlife Recreation Area next, but only found a ‘waterfowl hunting’ area. That didn’t look very promising, and it was past 4 by this point, so we just headed out. We stopped at a teriyaki restaurant in Aberdeen for dinner. He sat in a high chair and liked my orange chicken, although he was less fond of Carly’s teriyaki chicken. We headed home from there, having to pull over once to change his shirt as he grabbed a water bottle from me and poured water over himself.
Back at the house, I stayed outside with him for awhile. He was intrigued by Chuck using a rake and other tools and we ended up sweeping parts of the garage and driveway with a big push broom. He had more evening silly time as Chuck and Cherie played cribbage. He started to crash, so Carly took him up for a bath. She started in the bath with him, but after awhile she got out and he was happy for the first time in the bath by himself. Quite the end to a day of firsts.
On the way there:
Pointing out to the waves as we walk out to the ocean:
Looking at the dead jellyfish. Or something:
Waving goodbye to the ocean:
