Whispers and Shouts: First Ocean

Woah. Big.

Last weekend we took a trip to Virginia Beach to visit my sister-in-law and her kids and then stopped in Richmond to see my aunt and uncle. It was a nice trip and the boys, aside from Cal coughing so hard he threw up one time, were amazing little travelers. It is always so fun to introduce the boys to new things, but especially really cool, important things. Like say, the ocean. They saw the ocean for the first time last weekend. It must be amazing to look at that for the first time. I remember the first time I saw the Atlantic Ocean was when I was 18. And I hadn’t seen the Pacific Ocean that many times either. The beach there in downtown Virginia Beach was the very same spot I first looked at the Atlantic Ocean too.

The boys have a Baby Einstein video about water, which includes some shots of the ocean, but as was evident from a trip to a farm a few months ago, they had very little idea of what the ocean is. We were walking on a path in between two fenced off areas where there was a big puddle that also took up some of one of the pastures. Cal pointed and excitedly said, “Ocean!”

Last Saturday, as we left the stroller by the boardwalk and started hiking across the expanse of sand toward the beach, the boys were terrified. Though they like sand, they hated it on their feet. They didn’t want anything to do with the water, even though their older cousin was frolicking with abandon in the waves and Brian and I were wading. We had to carry them there and then they begged to go back and look for ceiling fans they believed to be in a building we had walked by on the way. We directed their attention at everything individually- the seagulls and the boats, the kids, the sand, etc.

Eventually they started liking the sand. They threw it up in the air and got it in their hair, their eyes, each other’s hair and eyes. Made for a messy bathtub when we got back, but I was glad they finally warmed up to the giant awesomeness that is Ocean. Enjoy my first-ever blog photo story.