Vacation Updation

Luke's first beach experience! Life IS good!






So it's been awhile, eh? Vacationing with a busy 1 year old wore me out and well I guess I just needed a blogging break. Maine was fabulous, though rainy and although we've been at this parenting thing for more than a year we didn't realize how different vacation would be too. He was up at 5:30am everyday, and due to the tiny yet cute house, was bunking with grandma. So we had to rush in quickly to save her some extra sleep while we corraled him in the upper living area (yes the kitchen/living/dining room was on the top floor). Somehow she and Joyce slept through his early morning gear up and go action.


We also realized that no longer can we selfishly lolly-gag in beach chairs reading indulgent magazines and when the sun beats too hard, go frolic in the ocean.

My idea of vacation bliss (though actually I did get to do this a bit as John was super-dad!)




He ate sand and seaweed, thankfully he was spared ingesting any seagull pooh.




Daddy tried to keep him contained in what he called, "Luke-A-Traz"



We chased him all over as he met friends, tried to keep him from eating whatever he could find in the sand, and happily sat in the crashing surf regarding the fact that our suits were filling up with wet sand. It is the beach afterall and I'm not complaining. Seriously. It was just kind of funny how we were so excited to have a vacation, thinking it would be like all of our other sans children vacations. A totally relaxing, sleep in, do what you want week off. How naive of us. Obviously parents don't get weeks off and vacations as we knew them are now different. Just another enlightening experience in parenthood.

He totally loved the ocean, no matter the temperature!



He ate his weight in clam chowder and shamelessly flirted with every waitress we met. Grandma and Joyce certainly helped keep him entertained with long walks on the beach and gave us a night off to dine alone. Even though we had lots of rain and even a tornado warning we made the best of it, enjoyed our ocean view and loved falling asleep to the lullabye of crashing waves. On our last day at the beach as we were packing up all the gear I looked around and said to John, "are you sure we've got everything?" He put his arm around me, kissed me on the cheek and said, "honey, the only things we're leaving here are our memories."