things to bring to the beach

cole and i enjoyed a lovely day today, heading out to lunch at capers (or whole foods, i guess, on robson) and then over to first beach and ceperley playground at stanley park.

we laid out our blanket - not an easy task with a, shall we say enthusiastic, toddler - and then scrambled on down to the water.

cole loves going in - he wades in until about knee level and collects rocks and seaweed and sticks and shells. everything got a lot messier after we ditched cole's shorts in favour of the practical (yet trashy looking and i swore i never do it but oh well) diaper and t-shirt combo. we made this same round trip between our blanket on the sand and the water 20 feet away many times, each time with cole becoming more and more caked in sand... when we were leaving the beach he tripped and got sand in his mouth and up his nose (although he didn't seem to care).

i am a big fan of kids getting dirty. they can always get clean anyway, and as long as he's safe i like him to just explore and have fun. life is too rigid nowadays, and i certainly don't think i should chase him around with hand sanitizer all the time... but, for future reference, i'd like to remind myself to bring a few things for our next beach trip:

• swim diaper + trunks
• a towel. yes, an amateur move - i forgot to bring a towel to the beach
• extra clothes for cole - nothing like shaking sand out of a wet t-shirt
• extra clothes for me - um, if he's filthy and i carry him to the change room, guess what i am too?

i did remember a camera, a pail, shovel, bubbles and other various toys. and the blanket, which made a very mediocre towel stand-in... i shoveled a lot of sand. we spilled the bubbles all over the clean(ish) shorts. but the camera did come in handy (i'd stopped taking photos once we started getting really dirty and didn't break it out again until we were getting cleaned up):

it was a wonderful day. :-) there is a great outdoor shower near the pool, so cole had a little nudie shower right there in the park and we got cleaned up... we spent the rest of the afternoon at the playground - they have some wacky slides over there by the fire engine - and cole became fast friends with this cute little girl from the uk who showed him around. so cute.