Ring! Ring! It’s SAJ calling in for Tuesday! Here’s my 7days photo where I’m not doing much. I’m supposed to be doing dishes but I am instead taking flattering (ie: shot from above where all signs of any double chin do not exist) pictures of myself not doing dishes. This is why I suck at domesticity. Playing with cameras and thinking up possible blog posts is way more interesting than cooking or household clean-up tasks.

But I actually didn’t think up any brilliant posts while I was procrastinating. Just the regular stuff. Today was a typical day in the life of a stay-at-home mom who lives near the beach.

My dad called me this morning while I was on a walk with my friend Sarah.

“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Oh, just walking to the beach,” I answer nonchalantly because it is true.
“Nice life you have,” he adds, chuckling.

Then I feel like a crumb because it’s true! I’m walking to the beach with a friend and I’m not even appreciating it fully! I could be driving a truck on the freeway in traffic! Or working with spreadsheets in a cubicle or getting my teeth drilled! I have so much to be thankful for.

Today was a BEEEE-YOOOOOO-TI-FULLLLL day at the beach too. It was more pretty than usual. Not too hot, not too cold. The water was warm, the sky was clear. It was perfect. I wanted to take tons and tons of photos but my waterproof camera is in the shop (three cheers for warranties!) and I won’t get it back for four to six weeks. (Not fourty-six weeks but four to six… ha ha Madagascar joke, oh I am such a mom of a preschooler)

So I very very very carefully pulled out my regular camera and took this photo of Bug and Wito. It’s very dangerous to shoot with my regular camera at the beach because one teeny tiny little grain of sand could send it to the repair shop for the SIXTH time. Hoo Boy it’s going to be a long four to six weeks.

It was terribly painful for me to be at the beach on such a pretty day and not have a camera to shoot. Especially because I have a sea shell alpha mom post coming up and the beach was screaming with photogenic shells begging me to make them models. Well, maybe not like the shells you find on exotic islands but still very pretty. Groan! I’m going to have to go back with a borrowed waterproof camera (anyone have one you’d be willing to lend me?) and recreate the whole day. It was just that fantastic.

But anyway… life is not all idyllic walks on the beach of course. There was plenty of temper tantrums from Bug thrown in to keep me humble. We went to see Ice Age today (I know, tough life) and she was a regular pill. Squirming and talking and climbing all over me. Up and down in her chair, all over the place doing everything but sitting quietly and watching the super-charged-high-action movie that should have had her sitting like a statue with her eyeballs popping out of her head.

Why does she do this? I’ve been trying to keep a close watch on her food intake and sleep patterns so that I can avoid the child from hell but she seems to always be one step ahead of me. She had lunch, she had a decent nap, why is she acting like she has low blood sugar?

And then? At the end of the movie when I refused to let her climb the stairs to the top of the theatre, she had a good old fashioned cry fit that lasted our entire drive home and then some. By the end of it I was wishing I had let her climb the stupid steps. But I can’t let her win these battles. It’s already quite questionable who is really boss in this relationship.

Alas, this is three. Three is kicking my butt around the block and back. Good thing three is so cute.

I forgot to show you this photo I took yesterday. This is Bug “pushing her daughter.” And this is why I don’t drop her off at the fire station and run for the hills every time she gets my blood pressure rising. Because the moments when she is not being bad are the most precious moments I have ever experienced in my whole life.

You know what she said tonight after I had nagged her about forty-seven times to get out of the tub? She lowered her voice to a deep monotone, looked me in the eye and then said officially, “Get out of the tub! Get out of the tub! We have a situation, Mr. President.”

That kid. She wears me down and then she cracks me up.