Wow. A lot has been going on lately. So much so that I haven’t had a chance to catch up and blog about it. I do want to mention that Toby and I and Baby Bug went down to the beach together and we took some family portraits… that was fun.

But the biggest news in fun is fourth of July weekend. My brother and his family came out and we all went to the madhouse that is the beach. It’s crazy. People people people everywhere! In fact main beach was so crowded with people who are from out of town, we had to pack up and leave. I seriously felt uncomfortable, like I had to sit on my purse because someone might pick pocket it. That’s way too crowded. Thankfully there is another smaller beach nearby that was only half as crowded. This smaller beach has lots of boulders and rocks that pummel your ankles to bits if you go swim in the waves, but that’s okay. I never spend that much time in the water anyway. It’s all about the sand and playing with the baby under the shade of a colorful umbrella.

Baby Bug loves the beach. I think she loves watching her cousins even more. They’re always coming up and talking to her and keeping her entertained. Later when we got back to the house I shoved in a Wallace and Gromit video to keep them entertained and Baby Bug spent the whole time watching her cousins while they watched the movie. It was funny. I should have taken a picture.

Of course no time with the nieces is complete without a lesson in physics from Uncle Toby. Last time it was making ice cream with ice and cream and salt. This time it was making explosions with mentos and diet coke. Maybe you’ve heard about it. It seems to be all the rage these days. So of course we had to make our movie (878 kb, quicktime ) too. But it’s way boring because we don’t have any big open spaces for making real exploding bottle bombs.

That sort of satisfied Toby’s need to explode things on the fourth of July. Not as fun as last year… but we had the baby’s ears to think of. After a nice pic nic on our patio (we opted not to share our food with the crowd at the beach) we headed off to the local dunes to watch some real fire works. Baby Bug fell asleep long before the show started but it was still fun to have her snuggled next to me in the sling and watch all the pretty colors with my nieces.

I learned something tonight. Before you take kids to the fireworks, always make them go to the bathroom. We had to take niece number one off to the bushes to squat and niece number too had to do a number two that could not be done in the bushes. My sister-in-law missed the entire fireworks show because she had to walk back to the car (that was very far away) to get a pull-up for the emergency poo. Good times.

“Is this what I have to look forward to?” I asked my sister-in-law. “No,” piped in Toby with all the authority of someone who does not yet have a toddler being potty trained. Well see. I know a lot from babysitting and learning from my nieces… but you can’t always have everything figured out.