I didn't have anything to worry about though, he seemed excited to see the water, saying "Wow, wow" as we walked down towards the beach.
Some clouds passed over as we got into the water, making it suddenly chilly. It didn't seem to bother him, he headed straight in, holding my hand.
The beach has a few distinct advantages over the wading pool. One of them being: SAND.
He didn't like how the sand stuck to his feet at first when we came out of the water. I got him to ignore it by teaching him how to bury toys in the sand and uncover them.
Blake wants us to name everything, over and over. He was fascinated by the star and octopus in the sand toys bag.
His brothers and sisters were involved in a highly-involved sand excavation project, so naturally Blake wanted to help.
They were less than pleased about the help. I told them he was the canal monster, and they better just get over it.
They did get into a little cooperative sand piling though, before we left. Blake didn't like when his siblings went off to swim in deeper water. He would wade out to his thighs and screech in their direction. When they didn't come back, he would turn around with a disgusted look on his face and go back to his sand play. Blake and I didn't go very far into the water today, it was still really cold.
We took a few minutes before we left to play on the really cool playground. The big boys enjoyed scaling this spiderweb-style jungle gym.
Blake was thrilled that they had little guy sized equipment at this playground. He was able to get on and slide down all by himself, with mom closely supervising of course.
In all, it was a very successful first beach outing. I think Blake and the big kids will be happy to go back again sometime soon.
