Monday was fairly laid back here since the weekend had been so full for everyone. In the afternoon we all walked over to the park, finally remembering to take some bread to feed the ducks, geese, and swans (Jonathan loves the swans, and Kayleigh always ends up pretending that she’s a duck too—today she told me that she was going to grow up to be a duck).
Today Jonathan had a great day—got to ride the bus in the morning as Joy & Brian had to drop the car off for its yearly inspection and they take the bus back, and then the he caught the 11:06 a.m., along with Kayleigh, Joy, Brian, and myself, to the Southend Victoria station and spent the afternoon in Southend-on-sea.
Upon arriving we ate lunch and then dropped in a few art/craft/toy stores along the way down the High Street to the coast, and finally made it to the sand about 1:30 p.m. or so. A few sandcastles were made, but no one seemed to be much in the mood for persevering at them. It was overcast and a little chilly, and since we stopped at the first bit of sand we got to it wasn’t all that clean—trash here and there, lots of cigarette butts. But I got rid of the butts and the kids didn’t really notice, so we enjoyed ourselves and I found a few more rocks.
Then the wonder of the afternoon came—I looked up and realized that the tide was going out. For me, who grew up with Galveston tides that don’t seem to vary more than about six feet between high and low tide, I was seventeen and in Brittany before I had any real idea what it meant when the tide went out. Huge, absolutely huge, swathes of land are uncovered! So when I looked up and saw all this beach that had been underwater when we arrived, I had to go out there, bucket in hand. As I had guessed, I found loads of seashells—the first one I picked up still had its inhabitant inside, so I put it back down—clamshells, mussels, whelkies, sea snails . . . it was great. There were also loads and loads of little sand crabs. I put one on my hand to show Kayleigh, who thought it was cute and petted it.
I didn’t get to stay too long b/c Kayleigh came out to me saying she had to go potty with me. Of course she did. So I put my feet in Jonathan’s sandals (didn’t want to wait long enough to clean my feet off and put my socks back on) and carried her off to the toilets. As soon as we got back, it was back down to the beach—and Joy came with me! She held onto my arm for stability and took her shoes off once we got to the wet part. Good thing, because it quickly got very, very squelchy and squishy. We had gone out a fair ways when behind us we heard at regular intervals the sound of a little girl saying, “Eeeuuww”, with fresh revulsion and horror at each step, as though the mud had found a new, slightly more squishy way to squelch up between her toes. But she soldiered on and didn’t let it stop her. Soon after that Jonathan came along, also making the same sounds of disgust, but coming on just the same. The two of them quickly went far past us, although that was partly because we kept stopping for shells.
I told Joy it was just like going to the salon, because we were getting a mud bath on our feet, and when we dried the sand off we’d be exfoliating them—and we were having a lot more fun on the beach than we would at the salon. She laughed and agreed. This evening after the kids were in bed, I did do her feet with exfoliating foot butter and then foot lotion (I’d done mine when I gave Kayleigh a bath). Have to admit it felt great and not quite as “eeeeuuuuwy” as the mud. But the beach exploration was a blast. I felt like such a kid out there looking at what the water had left behind.
Posted by elizabeth at July 15, 2008 06:31 PM