down by the bay

my story for the day happened before we even got to the waimea. we parked at the catholic church that's across kam from wiamea. it took me a good 15-20 minutes to get the girls all ready for the walk down to the beach. addi had been dressed in regular clothes because if we put her in the car in her swimsuit then she screams "water! water!" for the whole drive to wherever we're going. no good. 

  i had brought minimal toys for this trip, thus, the beach wagon (a little toy wagon about mid-shin high) was being used to tote towels. i was carrying gwen in my left elbow-crook and the extremely over-burdened beach bag was slung messenger style across my body. My right hand was holding addi's left hand while she pulled the wagon with her right hand. it seemed we were ready.

obstacle 1: cross kam, right. nope, crazy bicycle man. as we were walking out the driveway of the church parking lot this guy rides up on his bike carrying one of those HUGE bouncy balls ... pink ... that he found. he assumes it's ours, though i assure him it's not, and he hands it to addi. mind you, the ball is larger than your grandpa bill's prize watermelon, so what does addi do? drop it. and off down kam it goes. "ball. ball. ball!" at this point, bicycle man has sped off into the sunset (okay, so it wasn't really 'sunset' time), and i have a sweaty, fussy infant in one arm, and a toddler wanting to run down the highway after the ball in the other, the wagon has been long forgotten and is toppled over, it's contents splayed about, and we're in the driveway of the church parking lot with cars waiting to turn in because there's a wedding starting, and let's not forget the crazy-busy, accident-prone highway just inches away. we gather our things and we cross the road, to get to the other side, of course. 

my thought process: forget the ball. focus on task at hand: beach. but one of the many onlookers who had witness the entire devastated toddler/"ball!" scene decides to park his vehicle, run down the highway after the ball, stop traffic to retrieve said ball, and return it to us. remember how it's not ours? yah, it's not ours. it's bicycle man's ball. so now the man with the goatee and multiple piercings who smells of a peculiar plant is giving addi the ball. rewind and replay: addi gets ball, addi drops ball, ball bounces its merry way down highway, addi yells "ball. ball. ball!", cars braking, goatee man running ... 

the ball is now in the bushes on the other side of the guardrail and we're on our way. i assured goatee man that we would retrieve the ball on our way out. 

we didn't.

obstacle 2: traversing the somewhat cliff-like walk to waimea (between 18in. to 3 ft. in width) while carrying a 4 month old and knuckle-white clutching the hand of a toddler. guardrail and aforementioned highway to the left, huge boulders/impending death to the right. oh, and don't forget that addi is pulling the wagon. 

so the wagon keeps hitting rocks and toppling over, towels and shovels spill, we "clean up" and walk another 5 ft. before it happens again. people pass us, sometimes giving us our shovels that we left behind (it's like the oregon trail here folks). 

it gets to the skinny 18 in. part. the wagon keeps veering off the path towards the cliff side. addi wants to rescue it. i want to rescue addi. crazy. we made it doing a beautiful rendition of a side-step shuffle.  

then ashley, witnessing our precarious situation from the beach below, came to the rescue. she took addi and wagon, i took gwen and bag, and really it was quite simple from there on out.

after that it was all happiness, waterplay, and fun. 

thanks to all the awesome mommas who watched my addi for me. i really have absolutely no idea what occurred during those two hours of her life seeing as how i was feeding and entertaining gwen.