Things Zoë screamed at the beach

1) More la-lo! [Lots of water!]

2) Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!

3) Shoes—off!

4) Hat—on!

5) Come!

6) Wheeee! MOANA!

7) Whoa! La-lo on me!

8) Me, too!
9) I try! I try! I try!

10) WOW!

11) Uh-oh. Under!
12) Me 'kay. Me 'kay.

13) More try!



14) Snacks!
15) Share my nuts!
16) Mine!
17) Rocks!
18) My chair! My Towel! My _______!
19) Mom—up! [Mom's awake]
20) Home. Yeah.

We played hooky from a myriad of responsibilities today and went to the beach for some much-needed post-turning-in-that-dissertation R'n'R. Zoë did fabulously well on the drive there and back, announcing when she needed to go potty with a whispered "Poop!" and increasing the volume every few minutes while we scanned the horizon for gas stations until she would end up nearly screaming at us, "I POOP! I POOP! I POOP!"

At one point, while we were still hunting down an un-abandoned gas station, Andrew said, "How are you doing, Zoë?"

"I poop!" she answered (just to let us know that she still needed to go, I guess (usually she says, "I 'kay!" or something along those lines).

Poop, unfortunately, is her generic word for "I need to go potty." It only involves poop about 10% of the time, though it involves needing a toilet 100% of the time.

On the way home we were stuck in a weird construction zone and couldn't get off the freeway and then by the time we did we were only a few minutes away from our house. The poor girl was yelling "I POOP!" for a good forty-five minutes and was so desperate the final stretch that she started yelling, "RUN! RUN! RUN! Run, Mommy! Run, Daddy! I POOOOOOOOP!"

She doesn't say "hurry" but "run, run, run" gets the message across quite well.

We made it home in time for her to make a mad dash to the potty, but she got there in time. And then somehow didn't fall asleep until after eleven o'clock (which is ridiculous because she got up shortly before eight and spent the day frolicking in the waves and only took about a half our nap on the way home).

Anyway, we had a wonderful time at the beach. Zoë was incredibly brave, compared to the last time we took her to visit the ocean. She was more than happy to share her nuts with the birds (who for some reason completely ignored every speck of food she dropped and instead pestered other beach-goers (who had better snacks, I reckon) so she was disappointed that no birds swooped by to steal her nuts).

Everyone else had a good time as well, which I will write about later (after I go through all the many, many pictures we took).