Full-contact Rock Paper Scissors

Zoë and Benjamin were playing outside today (socially distanced, of course) with some neighbour kids (Alexander wasn't because he's still a little feverish; he felt being kept inside was terribly unfair and tried to explain to me that fevers are inside your body and that fevers "don't shed," so he wouldn't get anyone else sick, so I explained back to him that fevers are merely a symptom of a disease and while the symptom may not spread directly, the disease might) when Zoë ran back inside screaming and crying and bleeding everywhere. 

It was a four-bandaid emergency!

"What happened?!" I asked her.

I was very shocked when she replied, "Well, I was playing Rock Paper Scissors..."

"Rock Paper Scissors?!" I exclaimed, taking in all her multiple injuries. 

Was it full-contact Rock Paper Scissors?!

She put both her hands up to reassure me. "No one pushed me," she said. "I just was standing on the grass by the driveway at Zoey's house and I lost my balance and tried to put my foot down but when I did I put it right on the edge of the driveway and then my foot slipped off and I fell down!"

We got her all patched up—two bandaids on her elbow, one on her wrist, and one on her knee—and she felt much better, but I still juts can't stop laughing about how bloody that Rock Paper Scissors battle was! I've never seen anything like it in my life!

"Were you using actual scissors and rocks?" Andrew joked at dinner. 

"Dad!" she said, getting frustrated with our teasings. "I told you! I just fell down!"

Slam-johns

I volunteered to do a writing project this summer while I was between terms and it's been a little...agonizing. I don't think I will ever love the paper (or...even...like...the paper) but I think we've almost pulled it together, so that's something. I really should be working on it now because we have two weeks left to finish it, but I'm going to take a little bit of time to do some writing that's...not that. 

As a treat.

Somehow we ended up with bread and apples coming out our ears. Andrew does all the grocery shopping at our house, which is wonderful, but sometimes he has a lot going on and gets a little distracted and just...buys things. And then he gets home and I'm like, "Dude! We have a case of apples right here! What are we going to do with that case of apples?!"

Like, I know we have a lot of mouths to feed but there's only so many doctors we need to keep away!

Happy birthday to me

My birthday was on Tuesday and it felt like a somewhat important milestone for me because I thought that turning 36 was what would define me as being of "advanced maternal age," but as it turns out, any pregnancy at age 35 or later is considered a "geriatric pregnancy" so apparently I've been plain old this whole time. 

It's kind of strange because I feel no different than I did at 21 when my first OB/GYN called me a "spring chicken." I went from spring chicken to geriatric in 14 short years! Those 14 years flew by.

Rachel, my spring chicken baby, made a birthday cake for me. She carefully researched the most diabetic-friendly cake she could find—a carrot cake (vegetables!) with applesauce (that's healthy, right?) and cream cheese frosting (cheese is protein!). It was a very delicious cake (I had a slice because I technically haven't been diagnosed with gestational diabetes yet, though I'm sure that's coming). 

Tybee Island Lighthouse

Before heading home on Friday morning, we stopped by the Tybee Island lighthouse, one of five lighthouses in Georgia. It has quite a history of being built, being knocked down by a storm, being built back up again, being burned down so the Union couldn't take it, being built back up again, being knocked down by a storm, being...

But it's been standing for a long time now!

At 144 feet, it felt a little short to us compared to the North Carolina lighthouses we visited (Cape Hatteras is 210 feet tall, for example), but I guess it's not really that short because there are many, many lighthouses shorter than it. 

We didn't pay to go inside (the line was long, the price was pricey) but we did take a few quick pictures!

Hilton Head, SC

Usually we make a goal to do a certain number of home-state and out-of-state adventures as a family. We quickly abandoned those goals the first quarter of 2020 and...didn't really set any for 2021. So we decided that while we were on this vacation, hitting multiple of home-state adventures (Ocmulgee, Tybee South, downtown Savannah, Tybee North, UGA aquarium, etc.) we may as well hit an out-of-state adventure, too! After all, we were so close to South Carolina!

Georgia's coastline is only  about 100 miles, which sounds small (considering Alaska has about 6640 miles of coastline, North Carolina has about 300), but it's also the 16th longest coastline of any given state and states that I automatically consider "coastal states," like Rhode Island and Delaware, technically have less coastline (at 40 and 28 miles, respectively), though I suppose they have more coastline when you consider their overall size. I had honestly never considered Georgia a coastal state before moving here; I still have trouble considering Alabama a coastal state, but my mom's cousin in Alabama has been posting a ton of articles about Alabama's coastline lately so I guess they are (and looking at a map, this is true—they have about 50 miles of coastline). But when I'm thinking of coastal states I'm never like, "Oh, Alabama. Best beaches!" Nope. Alabama doesn't even cross my mind.

The west coast is easy. California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Alaska. There are no states sticking a sneaky finger into the coastline pie like there are in the east. I'm looking at you, Alabama. And New Hampshire, with your 13 miles. What even is that? Anyway...

To get to South Carolina, all we had to do was cross this bridge over the Savannah River (you might recognize it from our river walk downtown):

UGA aquarium/Skidaway Island

Despite feeling sunburnt and beat-up from our long beach excursion on Wednesday, everyone still wanted to go to the beach on Thursday. I thought it best that we take a little bit of a break from the sea and sun (and avoid being at the beach during the hottest part of the day), so we spent the morning at the UGA aquarium. 

Historic Downtown Savannah

We only "ate out" twice the entire time we were gone (it's amazing how many times you can fill tummies with PB&J, honestly (or dishonestly sometimes, too...because we forgot to buy jam and only realized it when we were getting ready to head to the beach on Tuesday morning so we sent Zoë and Miriam back down to the breakfast bar to grab a few little tubs of jam...which...I mean...we bought a little jar of jam for Thursday...). Wednesday evening was one of those two times because there was a Cook Out right across the street from our hotel!

We like Cook Out, but there isn't really one close to our house. 

Anyway, this Cook Out meal was a little disappointing because (a) their milkshake machine was broken, which meant no milkshakes (I'm trying to be a good pregnant lady and not eat a lot of sweets because I just know I'm going to be diagnosed with gestational diabetes any day now so this was probably good for me, but was disappointing for everyone else) and (b) they forgot to put any sauce in our order and Andrew forgot to ask. So we just ate...plain hush puppies and plain chicken strips. 

"We will find dessert!" Andrew promised the kids.

There's this famous ice cream place in historic downtown Savannah called Leopold's. Andrew decided we'd go there. Why not?

So we drove downtown, parked, and started walking toward Broughton Street. 

Tybee Island, GA

We spent all day Wednesday at North Beach on Tybee Island. It was a lot less windy than it had been on Tuesday evening (which we spent at a more southerly beach on Tybee) and we heard on the news over breakfast that it was because of the big storm that rolled in that evening. I was glad the wind really was atrocious on Tuesday because...it had been a while since we'd made it to the beach...and I couldn't remember if it was always that miserable and I had just been remembering things wrong or what. The sand was stinging our legs as it hit and it was really quite uncomfortable. 

But on Wednesday all we had was a lovely sea breeze and the day was perfectly beautiful.

I took a million pictures because (a) we haven't been to the beach in forever and (b) I'm a lot less adventurous when I go to the beach pregnant than when I go to the beach when I'm not so while everyone else was enjoying boogie boarding out in the waves I took a gentler approach...

Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park

As I mentioned, we stopped by the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park on our way to the beach. We visited the Etowah mounds in October 2019 (and that very well may have been the very last "adventure" we took before the whole COVID thing happened), so we were a little more prepared for what we'd see this time around. This particular site features an earth floor dating to 1015 AD (the lodge built over it is a reconstruction, but it was fun to go inside and look at the floor (admittedly, that's still rather recent history (I've seen mosaics older than this floor, for example), but it's still pretty cool and...among the oldest we've got)). 

Here's Benjamin at the entrance to the lodge, anxiously waiting to go inside (he's usually at the front of our group, no matter where we're going):

Hello, old friend!

Our first stop of the day was actually at the Ocmulgee Mounds National Park, which I will write more about later, I'm sure. For now I will say that they were...hot...and interesting...and hot...and Benjamin's life was made when he got to ask a park ranger how they got their job...and we were all really hot.

I suppose we shouldn't really complain because Salt Lake City hit a record-breaking 106°F today! We were only in the 90s (with something like 97% humidity). So it was hot for us...but not as hot as some places.

What the kids really wanted to do was get to the beach already (but we had to stop for a lunch break somewhere so a picnic at Ocmulgee Mounds it was (safer than attempting a restaurant; not that many dining rooms are open yet)). The whole time we were there the little kids were trying to see the ocean from the tops of the mounds or asking if we were "there" yet, which we weren't, but after a short 2.5 hour drive we finally made it to our "beach hotel."

Alexander seems to be purposely throwing in as many /s/, /sh/, /j/, and /ch/ sounds as he can now that he can actually say those sounds. So our hotel isn't just a hotel. It's a "beach hotel." He's not even disappointed that we're thirty minutes away from the beach. He's just so excited to be here. 

He also carefully pointed out each and every "gas station" along the way. Once we passed one and he said, "There's another gas 'tation..." and when he realized he forgot the initial /s/ in 'station,' he just...stuck it on the end. So he ended up sayin, "There's another gas tay-shun...ssss!" He's getting lots of good practice in and we still find it so ridiculously cute whenever he says anything with any of his new sounds.

Anyway, after checking into our "beach hotel" (half an hour away from the beach), we headed to the beach to play until the sun set (completely neglecting to have any dinner). As we were walking across the boardwalk to get to the beach, Alexander saw the ocean and exclaimed, "That's a big river!"

He was very impressed by the ocean (and practiced saying that word a billion times while he was building sand castles).

Here he is being very impressed: