The weather this weekend was superlative: 60-degree sunshine, which I’ll take ANY DAY over 80-degree sunshine.
Saturday was A’s first trip to an ocean bench, which was Crane Beach in Ipswich. It was wayyy too cool to venture into the ocean, but he had a ball playing with the buckets, shovels, and sand. (I do believe it was his first time walking in the sand, and the initial freaking-the-eff-out gradually subsided into woah-wow-wipee.)
Realizing baby fish are swimming in the bucket of ocean water
Die, little fishies!
He loved the beach. He would have looved to go back today and tomorrow and for the rest of his life, but Mommy and Daddy craved the mountain, for there is nothing better than hiking in cool sunshine. So we headed to Mount Monadnock inNH, alledgedly the second-most hiked mountain in the world, because it’s the closest “big” mountain. Of course, A. refused to budge from our Deuter childcarrier for the entire ascent, which Mr. P bore with his usual quiet strength and grace.
Letting the Kid out of the Bag on the Top of Monadnock
He was quite active after we reached the typically-mobbed summit, and I was forced to accompany him because Mr. P was temporarily incapacitated from the effort of bringing 40+ pounds of dead weight up a mountain.
Exploring the Summit
Many people oohed and aahed over A., especially the groups of religious teenagers who regularly make pilgrimages up the mountain.
Monadnock Summit
Of course, he is such a beautiful child that I can certainly sympathize with the pandemonium that he creates.
Cute
Mr. P was, understandably, exhausted, and laid down to close his eyes. A. of course wanted to emulate Daddy…
Napping
I don’t want to place expectations on A. by projecting my own interests on him, but I secretly hope that someday he’ll look at pictures of his first mountain hike on Monadnock with amused fondness, for he will have hiked heights more formiable than this one… and without Mommy and Daddy to haul him along…
