Greg's family spent summers at the Cape when he was a kid. July and August were tan and sandy days at the beach with lunch out of the cooler and, if the four kids deserved a special treat and Nan was buying, fries from the concession stand. The Atlantic was his playground. He learned to swim and sail and dive, and he can still hold his breath under water longer than anyone I know. The Cape is Greg's favorite place, Fenway included.
Last Saturday, we packed the car to bursting and headed to the beach. With Baby C so small, we didn't drive eight hours up to the Cape but are hanging out in Delaware for a week in a rented beach house with some friends. (They're brave enough to vacation with a nine month old because they have two sweet-hearted and impish girls, ages six and two.)
Greg couldn't wait to show Baby C the beach. He took his baby, sticky with sunscreen, up to the wild Atlantic waves. "See, baby." He held her out, let her feet get wet. She screamed at the surf and clung to him. "It's okay, baby. This is the ocean." Later, under the shade tent, she slept covered in sand. I pulled out sandwiches from the cooler. Greg swam past the breakers. It's summer.
Going Fishin'
We're headed to the beach tomorrow. If Baby C stops eating sand long enough for me to post, I'll let you know how it's going. We're not off to the best start, considering that I haven't started packing yet. But, I have a list. That counts for something, right?
New Beginning
Uh, hello? Is this blog on?
My long silence here is Baby C's fault. After nearly nine months of playing fast and loose with the kid's soul, we finally had her baptized last week. Her grandmothers are much relieved. The renouncing of Satan turned out to be the least of our worries. We had to clean the house for all the family who would be in town, so we also decided to throw a big party, sort of a baby-house-warming. Which meant that we finally had to unpack those boxes from our move last August. And hang curtains. And get pictures framed. And figure out what to feed all the houseguests. And repair the hole in the deck, weed the garden, buy a grill, rent a tent, discuss our ambivalence towards organized religion in hissed whispers to avoid alerting the more devout members of our family that our views may not be exactly orthodox, and, well, you get the idea.
Greg had emailed people to say “no gifts, please", but I got one anyway. We spend a lot of time as guests in our parents’ houses in our original hometowns (his: Boston, hers: Chicago), where it sometimes feels that real life unfolds without us. Baby C’s christening brought our families together for the first time since our wedding five years ago. Most of our local friends (and even a couple of long-distance ones, too) joined us. Having everyone together in our freshly-curtained house made me feel more established, somehow. I realized for the first time that our life in DC has a weight and substance of its own.
My long silence here is Baby C's fault. After nearly nine months of playing fast and loose with the kid's soul, we finally had her baptized last week. Her grandmothers are much relieved. The renouncing of Satan turned out to be the least of our worries. We had to clean the house for all the family who would be in town, so we also decided to throw a big party, sort of a baby-house-warming. Which meant that we finally had to unpack those boxes from our move last August. And hang curtains. And get pictures framed. And figure out what to feed all the houseguests. And repair the hole in the deck, weed the garden, buy a grill, rent a tent, discuss our ambivalence towards organized religion in hissed whispers to avoid alerting the more devout members of our family that our views may not be exactly orthodox, and, well, you get the idea.
Greg had emailed people to say “no gifts, please", but I got one anyway. We spend a lot of time as guests in our parents’ houses in our original hometowns (his: Boston, hers: Chicago), where it sometimes feels that real life unfolds without us. Baby C’s christening brought our families together for the first time since our wedding five years ago. Most of our local friends (and even a couple of long-distance ones, too) joined us. Having everyone together in our freshly-curtained house made me feel more established, somehow. I realized for the first time that our life in DC has a weight and substance of its own.
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