Cousins in the tub at Thanksgiving in NJ

Tonight my sister's kids and JB took a tub together.

Overheard:
Cam: Look at me, I'm swimming like a dolphin!
JB: I'm swimming like a clown fish.

How unintentionally hilarious!

We are at Cape May for the Thanksgiving holiday. We drove up Tuesday night. Since Kt is still on maternity leave, I took Wednesday off from work and my sister piled the four kids and three adults into her minivan. We left at 7pm and arrived just after 1am. I couldn't help but worry, my parents' whole life in that van. All it would take is one asshole on the highway to ruin the entire show. But we arrived safe and had a great, if tiring commute. JB woke up crying 2 or 3 times (maybe his ears were bothering him.) ML slept right thru. All three kids were up for between 10 minutes and a 1/2 hour between the time we arrived and got them to bed.

We were all (parents included) a little bit of a wreck yesterday: short tempered, whiny, low threshold for irritability after having only gotten 4-5 hrs of sleep.

This morning was a different story however and we all woke up feeling somewhat refreshed.

I took JB for a walk to the water this am. My aunt's inn is only one block away from the Atlantic Ocean. He is a timid boy. He is prone to disapproving of discomfort and of change. I put his boots on him and his "Watch Hill," "Nantucket Red" sweatshirt; his head adorned with a blue and grey skull cap. He was a sight on the beach- totally adorable. It was overcast and cloudy and about 55-60 degrees. It was not that warm... but if I had had a suit I would have jumped in. There were real-sized waves. Waves much bigger than those JB has seen at our summer vacations where the beach is on a protected cove. He stayed away at first, content to watch me splash barefoot in the surf. But by the end, was soaked up to his waist by salt water and was eager to catch the tail end of a few waves. When it was all over, I made a point of telling him how much I loved the ocean and how cool it was that he was willing to get all wet and how fun that was for Mommy and how much I hoped that he had had fun too... AND, how proud I was of him. He looked at me and said, "No crying, no whining, no fussing."

This is a mantra that we had to create and implement when day care drop offs started getting bad... "you are going to school and Mommy will miss you, but when we say goodbye, no crying, no whining, no fussing, nobody wants to hear that..."

To hear him put it in this context really made me laugh. And more pertinently, it made me smile. Sometimes, with this kid, I have so much fun. Anyway, I was proud of JB and I was happy to step into the ocean and I did wish that I had packed a swimsuit. And there are many millions of things I am thankful for. But none more than my wife and my boys. Such cutie pies!

Happy thanksgiving!!!