liam at eight

While we were on vacation this past week, it came as a little bit of a surprise to me that Liam was the child who was the most homesick. From our first day on the road, he talked about how much he missed our house, the pets, his aunts and uncles and grandparents, and just the general feeling of being home. Not that it stopped him in any way from having fun the whole time: He was always the first to run into the ocean, to suggest taking a walk to look for shells or going on a bike ride. Being in a new place and on the move can be pretty stressful, but Liam mostly just smiled and threw himself into every new adventure.

It's been another year filled with changes for our Liam. He got his first pair of glasses (sorry, buddy!), he's getting geared up for braces (I'll let Mike apologize for that one), and he continues to grow tall and strong and proud. He rides his bike by himself now, and he doesn't have to sit in a booster seat in the car anymore, which is a Very Big Deal for him. He still loves soccer, but this year he decided to try baseball too and has discovered that he loves it. He swims every time he gets the chance, and he likes nothing better than to go out and help Mike in the garden, picking up plenty of fun facts along the way.

With his brothers, Liam is equal parts benevolent teacher and impatient dictator. He is easily frustrated by Henry especially, which is no wonder since Henry seems to have reached a fever pitch in the terrible twos (please, please, let this be the peak!) and is constantly taking (and often destroying) Liam's toys, games, books, and anything else he can get his hands on. Though he still fights with Max on a regular basis, there are long stretches (by which I mean whole hours) when they get along perfectly well, playing video games together or going outside to play, and I keep catching these little glimpses of a future where maybe they can all get along and Mike and I will be more parents than referees. Liam is leading the way on that score, (most of the time) showing his brothers a better, more peaceful way to be.

Like last year, we celebrated Liam's new year with a party at the local pool. He invited all of his classmates and teammates, along with the usual crew of family members, and quite a few kids showed up for a couple of hours of swimming fun, with a brief break for cupcakes and drinks. He was in his element the whole time, horsing around with his friends and going off the diving board and down the slide fully one million times. He opened presents, and when he thanked his grandma for her gift, she hugged him and kissed the top of his head. "Grandma! That's embarrassing!" came the immediate response. Don't worry, Barb — it's not just you. This year the kisses have pretty much shriveled to nonexistence, and the hugs are rare and precious. When they do happen, they're bright, happy bursts of energy that let us know that at least we're doing something right along the way.

Happy birthday, Liam. We love you!

here comes the sun

Just in time for our last day in island paradise, it got sunny and warm outside. A gorgeous day, really. We started out early by doing some shell hunting at the north end of the island, which turns out to be not very different than the south end. But we did get to explore that end of the island some more, including the lighthouse. On the way back, we swung by the fire station, where Mike made a new friend and did a patch exchange for my dad -- apparently it is a "thing" for fire departments to trade patches with each other on visits. I never really thought about it much before, though I did notice that my dad's fire station has a bunch of patches on display from all over the country. Mike went in to the Tybee fire station and asked if they traded patches, and the woman just pointed to the wall behind him, where there were hundreds of patches on display. I'm thinking they do a more brisk patch exchange than the Hamlet FD, mostly since Hamlet isn't exactly a tourist mecca.

Anyway. Back to the cottage for snack, then out to the beach we went for swimming and sunning. Henry got really cold in the ocean water, and wouldn't stop shivering even when I wrapped him up in two towels and sat in the sun on the beach with him, so I brought him back up for a warm shower while Mike and Liam and Max stayed on the beach. They came back up for lunch, and afterward Henry napped (oh, okay, I napped too!) while Mike took the other boys back down to the beach for another round. Later in the afternoon, Mike and I wanted to go for a bike ride, and Liam and Henry were willing, but Max was totally not. So I ended up taking Max shopping at Seaside Sisters, where we got some wonderful souvenirs, while Mike took the other two on a ride around the inland side of the island and explored the marshes a little bit. Henry has a new bike seat that goes in front on Mike's bike, and he loves it way more than the enclosed trailer we usually use.

We ended up getting takeout for dinner from Sundae Cafe, a very cool restaurant that was totally booked up with reservations until late late tonight. Good thing I read somewhere that you could call them and order to go since it isn't on their website! Liam and I had crab cake sandwiches, Max and Henry went with their old standby (shicken nuggets, as Henry calls them), and Mike had a burger. Delicious! Now Mike is taking them for one last walk along the beach, and I'm starting to get everything packed up so we can hit the road early tomorrow. We're hoping to do it all in one shot, but we'll see how it goes. We have had a wonderful time here, but we're all ready to be back at home.

a course for adventure

More rain! But we're not letting it stop us from having a good time. This morning we headed to the north end of the island to Captain Mike's Dolphin Adventure and set off on a boat to cruise around the ocean and hang out by the dolphins. It was wet, but exciting. We saw a couple of different pods of dolphins in different areas of the ocean, we learned some interesting facts (What do dolphins drink? Nothing!), and the boys got an up-close-and-personal view of some, um, private dolphin anatomy. The cruise lasted a little more than an hour, and on the way in to the dock, Henry fell asleep and nearly fell right off the bench. Poor little bugger is coughing and losing his voice today too. He seems mostly still his energetic self, so hopefully he recovers quickly.

After the dolphin tour, it was still raining off and on so we headed into the gorgeous but confusing city of Savannah. The GPS directed us with no problem to Wormsloe State Park, where we got to drive down a live oak alley and see the ruins of a plantation. We first stopped in the museum, but it quickly became apparent that Henry was going to try to touch every single thing and push in front of every single person in the place, so we hightailed it out of there and set out on the walking tour. It was quiet and desolate, and the rain dripping through the moss-covered trees made it feel like a cross between time travel and the Hunger Games, if that makes sense. We walked through the woods and out to a marsh and over some bridges, saw the plantation ruins and a cemetery and some living history buildings, then looped back to the car.

Which is where the GPS failed us. It got us back to downtown Savannah pretty well, but then I used the function that lets you find the nearby restaurants, and it directed us to some pretty sketchy places that definitely were not local eateries. Eventually, we found our way back (after accidentally visiting pretty much every square in the city!) to Forsyth Park, and ate at a little cafe in the park. Then we checked out the Fragrant Garden, saw a big fountain (which excited Henry so much that he climbed the fence to get closer!), and walked down wide promenades under yet more mossy trees. Such a lush and beautiful place! I think I could spend a whole week just in Savannah, so it's too bad we only had the afternoon.

  
Tonight the weather seems to have cleared. We ordered pizza for dinner, and I ended up talking to the pizza guy about the best place to go look for shells. He recommended either the north or the south end, both places where the river empties into the ocean, so at low tide tonight we headed for the south end, which is really close to our cottage. We didn't find any giant shells, but we added plenty to our collection. The wind was pretty strong, and it waved across the wet sand where the tide had gone out.

So we're settling down for another night with three homesick boys, and tomorrow promises to be brighter, breezier, and warmer, so we're thinking our last full day here will be full of beach visits and bike rides...

purple sky at night?

Apparently it means that it will be rainy and windy and cold the next day.

rainy, with a touch of tropical storm

Today's been kind of a touch-and-go day in terms of the weather. It was really windy and rainy this morning -- the palm trees were whipping around pretty energetically. And it has rained off and on all day long thanks to Tropical Storm Debby. But this morning, after we had a leisurely breakfast of pancakes and sausage at the cottage, we ventured out for a walk and collected seashells. There are a bunch of very large conch shells on display here (like, just laying around where you would expect to find knickknacks) so the boys have been very disappointed to not just find them laying around everywhere they go. But we did collect quite a few lovely small ones, and we'll fill a jar with them to display once we get home.

There was another, longer break in the rain (though not the clouds) after lunch, so we went out for a longer visit to the beach. The boys were really into waiting for the waves to roll in, splashing around, building sand castles, and, of course, collecting yet more seashells. This time they filled their pockets with shells, along with plenty of beach mud. Lucky for us the cottage has a washer and dryer! We stayed out there until we were all soaking wet and tired, then came back up to the cottage for a full round of showers.

We decided to go out for dinner tonight, and picked a place on the Back River called A-J's Dockside. It's kind of a funky place -- Mike said it looked ramshackle from the front -- with incredible food. We are determined to try some regional cuisine on this trip, and to expose the boys to it (did I mention that we stopped at a BBQ place in Tennessee?), so I vetoed Liam's request for wings for our appetizer. Instead, we went with deviled crab (so good!) and boiled shrimp (so good! and so messy!) to share. Full confession: We did let Max get a hot dog and fries for his dinner, but only because we want him to eat and he is notoriously picky. But he did try a little of everything. We stuffed ourselves with shrimp and scallops and flounder with remoulade, which I had read about but never tried -- once we get home, I am definitely learning how to make that at home!

We ate outside, and that bird in the photo above was tormenting our fellow diners during the whole meal. We thought the whole thing was pretty funny, but there was a woman who was super furious that a bird would dare fly near her. She was lucky it didn't give her a special deposit the way she was squawking every time it entered her airspace! For us, it was free entertainment -- dinner and a show.

By the time we got back from dinner, Henry was pretty wiped out, but it was low tide so Mike took Liam and Max and headed back down to the beach to try to go out farther to find better shells. They got some good ones, but no giant conchs. Oh well, at least we still have tomorrow! And it looks like there might be a break in the weather, which would be wonderful. Stay tuned!

dispatch from the road

Well, it's been three very long days of travel, but we've finally made it to the coast. We left on Friday, then spent the night in Cave City, Kentucky. After a restless night's sleep (during which the boys somehow decided that "two queen beds" meant that mom would sleep in one and dad in the other, dividing the boys between them), we headed out to see something truly amazing: Mammoth Cave. We took a tour of part of the cave, which felt great compared to the heat of the day, and it was really beautiful and big and kind of scary (according to the boys). Most of the pictures I took inside the cave didn't turn out, but here are a few from the morning:

When we got out of the 54-degree cave and into the 90-degree-plus outer world, my camera fogged up. Too bad, because I loved some of those shots!

So once we were all caved out, we hit the road again for Atlanta and stayed Saturday night with my Uncle Matt, who was an incredibly good sport to put up with the five of us overnight. We had planned to visit Stone Mountain Park Sunday morning, but the boys voted unanimously to skip it in favor of just getting to the ocean already. So that's what we did. Most of today was spent driving through the great state of Georgia, which I can report has a lot of trees, at least along its many byways. We got here at 4:00, did some unloading and grocery shopping and settling in, then set out for the beach. Luckily, there is only one house between our cottage and the ocean, so it was a pretty short trip. Somewhat unluckily, a storm was rolling in, so we didn't get to stay very long. The tide was rolling out, so we looked around for seashells, and did some wading, then the rain started and forced us back inside. Hopefully we'll have better luck tomorrow.

Back at the cottage, Mike made the boys' favorite meal for dinner, a little dish we call "pasta forticus." It's pasta (of course) with pesto and fresh spinach and diced tomatoes and some kind of meat -- usually sausage. But today Mike made it with fresh locally caught shrimp, and it was delicious. We were watching The Lion King, which all the boys had somehow escaped seeing, and after dinner, they dropped out one by one. First Henry, who was perfectly happy to go straight to bed after dinner and didn't give a crap about the fate of Simba and company as long as he got his pacifier. About a half hour later, Max finally admitted that he wouldn't make it all the way through the movie and called it a night after making us promise to rent it so he could see the end. Liam made it all the way through, but barely, and went straight to bed as soon as the opening credits started scrolling. All in all, I'd say it was a pretty successful (if short) first day.

365 project: week 25

This week: Mike needs a vacation; Liam gets dirty; peace in the animal kingdom; and we finally hit the road and get to the ocean.