The Big Kahuna

We spent the past several days at Nan-nah and Na-dah's house in Hilton Head, along with Matt and Molly. The visit was different in years past when we were either at the pool or beach by 10 a.m. to work on our tans until at least 3 p.m. In fact, we only made it to the beach once and you would never tell by looking at us that we spent time in the sun. But we had a lovely time spending quality time with the family and not having anything to do except relax, talk and eat many tasty meals and desserts. Dave finally got to play 18 holes in a fiercely competitive golf scramble with na-dah (they came in second, out of three teams) and Sam enjoyed getting to know everyone a little better. By the end of the trip he was "talking" very loudly and his na-dah and Aunt Molly had him laughing at their silly faces.

Of course, the highlight for us was showing Sam the ocean for the first time. He checked out the surf and liked having his feet in the water. That took all of 10 minutes, then we placed him in his bouncy seat under the umbrella and he proceeded to have one of his best times ever. We didn't know if it was the ocean breeze or the rainbow colored umbrella flapping in the wind, but he was a happy camper wriggling in the seat and blowing bubbles. Meanwhile, Dave and Nan-nah were barely victorious over Matt and Na-dah in a game of horseshoe. We decided that our first trip to the beach will go down as the easiest, and from here on out it will only get more cumbersome as we lug all the necessities that go along with kids to the beach, but we can't wait. Dave is eager to finally have someone build sandcastles with him and Melanie wants to work on her tan. Sam also went swimming in the pool, accompanied the family for a round of miniature golf and visited his great grandma Doak. It was a great trip!

Developmentally, Sam is teething a ton. He's also very, very close to rolling over. Last night I placed him on his back in the crib for a minute and came back to find him almost on his tummy. If he would have just taken the one fist out of his mouth, there wouldn't have been anything holding him back! Oh, and the blue-eyed baby is no longer. We're not sure if the eye color is light blue, hazel or on the way to brown, but their definitely not bright blue. He's also sleeping more at night (knock on wood). The earliest he got up in the past seven nights is 4 a.m. His momma has a whole new lease on life when she gets a solid 6 hours, and when she gets 7-- oh my! Finally, his baby chatter has really upped in the past few days too, probably due to the fact that he was around so many people. As always, we added photos to the August section.