We spent a lovely July fourth weekend with family friends in beautiful Marion, MA -- a trip which is now becoming an annual tradition, much to our delight. There was eating, drinking, sand castle making, tennis playing, rocks into the ocean throwing, syntax mangling (see "rocks into the ocean throwing") and, yes, pooping in the wind.
This last item was actually quite poetic, the poop part notwithstanding. We were enjoying a lovely evening at the house of the family matriarch. After supper, the children -- ours and numerous others -- were frolicking in the yard overlooking Buzzard's Bay. Elsa and Clio were particularly interested in wheeling a baby stroller around and around a patch of high grass and fern, and at one point Elsa seemed to have been stuck in one spot for a long while. Alastair went over to see what was happening and Elsa told him she was, you know -- busy -- and asked him to go away. Alastair reported back to me, saying "Elsa is a bear in the woods." (Get it?) So, a few more minutes passed and I went down to see what was up, and collect her for a diaper change, but she still wasn't interested in going anywhere:
ME: Should we go inside and change your diaper?
ELSA: No. I want to stand here. It's windy!!
ME: Yeah, it is windy. Are you still making a poop?
ELSA: Yeah.
ME: OK, so you want to just stay here?
ELSA: Yeah. I want to poop in the wind.
The girl really does have an appreciation for the finer things in life, no? She had another poetic diaper moment at another point during the weekend, when I was changing her diaper while she was lying on the grass, and she looked up at the foliage of the oaks, blowing in the wind, and said "the trees are playing peekaboo with me!"
But I will subject you to no more poop anecdotes. Instead some pictures:
Here we all are watching the Marion Fourth of July Parade. Note the way the sunlight -- a rare thing in New England these days -- glares off our pale, pasty New England legs.
When she wasn't composing poop poetry, Elsa was training to be a constabulary horticulturalist.
Some major sand-castling was also done.
Also included in our vacation package: two perfect deck chairs, just the right size for two little girls. And their pretzels.
There were lots of "big kids" around to look after the girls -- and give us a bit of a break!
It really was a nice weekend, with just the right balance of family time and relaxation time (and sometimes the two even overlapped a bit). Our hosts and their children were kind enough to look after the girls for a few stretches so Alastair and I could relax a bit, play some tennis, chew our food, etc. And I must say: while I'm not opposed to being a guest at other people's vacation houses, being there really made me wish we had one of our own. Anyone have a spare beachfront property lying around that they'd like to give to a nice family of writers / musicians / budding poets? You could be a modern-day Medici! A patron of the arts! And we'll invite you to all our cookouts! No? Sigh.
Well, before I go -- unfortunately, I came home from our seaside escape with a weird cold that has left me just drained -- one final anecdote. Lately, the girls have gotten much better at listening and following directions (i.e. minding their parents), sometimes with comic results. At one point this weekend, Alastair and I were casually knocking a shuttlecock back and forth over a badminton net, while the girls, also with rackets in hand, ran around underfoot. Clio decided to give Alastair a whack with her racket, and he gently but firmly told her that she could not hit people with a racket; rackets were for hitting shuttlecocks or balls, NOT people.
So Clio promptly ran over to a basketball lying a few yards away in the grass and starting whaling on it with her bandminton racket.
I laughed so hard I almost peed in the wind.
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