Fearless

This weekend we took a day trip to the beach.  I really love the coast.  It's one of my favorite places to be.  Considering how close we live we really don't go often enough.  We piled Toby and the 2 dogs into the car and headed out.  I was pretty apprehensive about handling a very active toddler and two dogs but I took a deep breath and we hit the road.  The car ride started out pretty rough.  Toby wasn't happy about being in the back seat by himself and Pooka was grumpy about being banished to the back of the vehicle in his crate.  We stopped  at our favorite breakfast spot on the way to Long Beach, all little place called The Berry Patch in Westport, OR and then loaded back into the car, this time me in back with Toby to keep him company.

When we got to Long Beach we headed straight to the beach.  Toby's to the age where we have to decide if we should load him into the stroller or let him walk.  Since we would have had to carry the stroller until we got to the hard sand we let him walk. He was very interested in the sand and walking in it.  He walked until he was tired and then I carried him to the harder sand.  That's where the fun began!

Toby was loving it!  I took him up to the edge of the ocean to see how he liked the water and he was totally into it.  He would have walked right in and kept on going if I'd let him.  This brought up some uncomfortable thoughts for me to be honest.  I love how fearless he is and I don't want to squash that but I also don't want him trying to fly off the roof one day.  How do I simultaneously encourage his freedom and bravery while teaching him boundaries?  One of the many parenting conundrums I have to sort out.

Wanting to give him a little more freedom, we went up to where the higher tide had left puddles and I let him play around for a while and then we went and played in the sand.  He had a great time pushing the sand around.

I was still feeling a little overwhelmed with having both Toby and the dogs there but Josh talked me down.  He took care of the dogs while I watched the baby.  Maybe not the most relaxing trip to the beach ever but we all had a pretty good time.

We planned on walking around town for a while.  They were having cake for Jake the Alligator Man's birthday but we felt it was too warm of a day to leave the dogs in the car.  After a change of clothes for Toby, we loaded back into the car, stopped for some french fries and headed back towards home. Baby and dogs were all tuckered so slept blissfully all the way home.