week ending Aug 12, 2007:

Week ending August 12, 2007: This week I took the kids to Ocean City with their cousin Natalie and Aunt Danielle. It turned out to be the hottest day of the year, over 100F, but I guess that is what the ocean is good for. In the evening we went to Trimpers Rides and let the kids get on about a half dozen rides. Natalie is a bit of a dare-devil and will get on anything, and I think having her along helped Alex get a little brave and try some new rides. All the kids had a great time on the rides, but Alex seemed to be particularly joyful. He is normally pretty reserved, but at Trimpers he giggled and shrieked and grinned from ear-to-ear. That kind of joy is contagious and even though I didn’t get on any rides, I had a great time just watching them. The kids would get off one ride and hop up and down because they were too excited to just walk and then they’d take turns deciding which ride they’d try next. The “race cars” were a real hit with everyone. The cars are on an oval track and along the straight sides they are very tame, but at the rounded ends of the track the cars whip around so fast that the passengers can’t help but slide to the outside of the seat. It looked pretty fast and scary to me so I tried to talk Alex out of going on it, but he said he wanted to, so I said ‘ok’. It turned out to be the ride on which Alex laughed the most. He and Chloe rode together and got squished into one side of the car on every turn and neither of them complained “he/she’s on my side” because they were too busy laughing. The next morning we took the kids to the beach and again Natalie’s unbridled enthusiasm seemed to help Alex come out of his shell. There was a great tide pool behind a low sand bar such that the waves would break long before they’d get to us and wouldn’t knock the kids over. This allowed the kids to run in and out of the water without holding anyone’s hand. Every time a wave would come Natalie would shriek and laugh and run out of the ocean, then she’d run right back in as soon as the wave was gone. Alex caught onto this game right away and the two of them had a blast. Chloe got focused on finding seashells and putting them into her bucket. By the end of the day she had quite a few to bring home. Her lashing-out behavior of last week is getting better all the time. The pictures from OC are at: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/OceanCityAug2007
On Sunday we visited with Grammy Carole who just got back from a vacation in Ireland. Her pictures are at http://picasaweb.google.com/steveandcarolesmith/Ireland2007