Beach Day

My friend's Denise & Max and Marcy & Drake invited Ethan and I to go to the beach with them a couple weeks ago. I hadn't taken Ethan to the beach yet and was excited to see what he would do. I knew it was going to be a lot of work and was a little nervous about tackling this by myself, but I was off without any hesitation....they wanted to go to Oval beach in Saugatuck, so it was a bit of hike for us, but we made it in about 30mins. Unfortunately, the weather didn't quite cooperate for us, but we made the best of it. At first Ethan just picked the sand up and poored it out, picked up and poored out - on me, the blanket, the cooler, then finally his toys! After a while Max decided to come play and he was really cute. Everything Ethan would do, he would do, we got some water in the bucket for him and they were pooring sand in it, well after a few mins Ethan didn't want Max to "help" him and got a little upset, but we got through it! I sat him near the shore for a while and let the waves crash on his legs and he just squealed in delight every time a wave would hit him. It was awesome! I left my camera in the car initially (rookie!) and didn't get any pictures of it - this time, I'm sure we'll catch it one of these times! Once we decided to go, I was completely unprepared. He was wet and full of sand, and I had a dry diaper, but no change of clothes. I don't know what I was thinking! The water was pretty cold and I didn't want to go in to rince him off so, thankfully my friends watched him while I halled everything to the car then came back with a towel and a diaper. My next challenge was to get him up the stairs and the bathrooms where I could use the shower to get the sand off....yeah, that went over like a lead balloon! Ethan flipped out and I ended up just doing the best I could getting the sand off with the towel, throwing his diaper on and wrapping him in another towel to ride home in! I, of course, was covered in sand as well at this point. I tried to pull myself together once I got him strapped in the car - my friends, who know what they're doing, were long gone by now, which was probably a good thing, b/c it would have just been a good laugh I'm sure!!! Anyway, I'm way better prepared for the beach now! I've even done it a couple times since....I look like a pro now too!

Here's when Ethan's attitude changed....can you tell??