I Spent $18 Ruining a $30 Pedicure

And it was worth every sweet penny!

I am back from my OBX vacation with lots to tell, most importantly extolling the benefits of taking a vacation with a child and assorted family members willing to fight over who gets to feed him, play in the sand with him, change poopy diapers, etc. This allows you and the hubby to choose how much time you want to spend with the dear child, but also escape for a late night walk on the pier, a date night, or even just escaping into books. (I almost finished 2! That's 2 more than I've finished since he was born.)

There were definitely some frustrations about beach vacationing with a wee babe. Mostly because the hubs and I are beach vacation people, but not necessarily beach people. The whole sand thing is a problem. Plus our little man's skin is fairly sensitive, so the daily sunscreen/sand/sun/shower routine was not kind to us last week. Luckily he only gets the baby excema, not the full-blown, painful kind, and most of it seems to be clear this week after reverting back to the unscented lotion and Aquaphor routine. The amount of STUFF required to stay away from home for a week, as well as what is required just to go down to the ocean for an afternoon, was astounding. Our poor sedan was packed to the gills, with our furry black baby resigned to make the trip with only about 2 square feet of backseat to herself.

Also, our little guy is a poor daycare napper, which means he spends his weekends catching up on sleep, with a two hour morning nap and a two hour afternoon nap. This was exacerbated (wink, Anne) even more by the activity level he put out during his waking hours on vacation, and the fact that he shared a room with us. A given schedule on vacation: up at 5:30, nurse, back down for an hour if I was lucky, then a 2 1/2 hour nap from 9-11:30, and an afternoon nap beginning around 2:30 that sometimes lasted so long we had to wake him just to ensure he didn't sleep through dinner. There was a lot of waiting involved in this vacation. I didn't mind: see, I read 2 books!

The highlight of the trip by far, though, was our jaunt to the same waterslide where I spent my own childhood summers building my love affair with any kind of water activity. I spent $12 so I could ride the big-kid slides, hubby spent $3 so he could hang in the kiddie pool, and our tiny tot was free. We spent nearly two hours hanging in the kiddie pool letting Jacob "swim" back and forth between us, walk through the water, and sit in our laps while we went down the easy slides. This excursion was such a delight, I could have cared less that my new perfect pedi got scraped to all hell in the pool. My mother exclaimed "I guess we're going to have to install a slide on the pool next summer" with excitement. I would have gladly done it over and over to watch his laughing face as we hit the water.

I think we're even considering going again later this summer! Lucky for us, we only live 3 hours away!