Love the Beach

Dax loves the beach! A combination of water and sand together, it's great fun.

Last week, on the way to the beach, we saw horses running alongside the road. Dax pointed and called out, "Hi!!! Hi horsies! Bye horsies!"
After we arrived at the parking lot. I got out the stroller and loaded it up with the cooler, sand toys, towels, etc. Dax is watching, squirming from his seat with excitement. I open his door and unbuckle him and he's leaping out of it "beach! beach! swim! sand!"
He pushes the stroller down the long pathway until we see the beach. Upon approaching the sand, he leaves the stroller and removes his sandals. Gleefully he runs across the sand until he's splashing ankle deep in the warm water.

I joined him in the water and we found a bunch of tadpoles swimming around. He stood very still, peering down into the water to watch them swimming. Later we found fish, usually individually, but sometimes in small groups of 2 or 3. Some small, some 8" long. Again, he stands oh-so-still so we can get a close look at the fish. His eyes are dancing with excitement even though his body is unusually quiet.
We spent an hour hunting for rocks and shells under the water. Clear water, looking down, spotting rocks. Throwing them and hearing them plop! Whenever he found a shell, he'd run to shore and put it in his bucket (which we emptied back into the lake before we left).

We dug a moat in the sand about 1' deep and 6" wide, we dug out from the lake about 8 feet. As it came time to dig up the last bit of sand so the lake water would fill our moat, Dax got down on his belly, his head inches from the sand/moat. I removed the last few shovels of sand, and the water flowed into our little moat. He watched the water with so much interest. Then he got up on his hands and knees and crawled to the end of our little moat and scooped out more sand and watched the water fill that space also. It was like a light bulb went off in his head. I love watching him see cause and effect in nature! :)
I built a bunch of sand castles and he happily knocked them to pieces as fast as I could build them.
After 3 hours, he was exhausted and asked to go to the car, so we cleaned out our sand toys and loaded up the stroller and walked back. On the way home, we saw fawns and deer. Dax sleepily lifted his head out from his car seat to look and point and smile and exclaim, "Deer! Baby deer!"

The leaves have almost all fallen from my cherry tree in the backyard. Fall is coming soon. Soon there will be no more trips to the beach.