July Photo-Dump

With Back-To-School in full swing, it’s almost painful to even try to remember July. I do remember that it started in one of our favorite places.

It was Man Cub’s first ocean, and he was every bit as excited as we hoped he would be. “Ooooh! Wa’er! More! More wa’er! Oooh, MORE! MORE WA’ER!” The expanse of the Atlantic was not lost on him. He made sure everyone he saw was aware that there was water, pointing it out with unbridled enthusiasm every time, and clarifying, “An’ more wa’er” to anyone who didn’t seem awe-struck at first blush. Crocodile tears the first time we left.

He inspires more than just a profound love of the ocean. At least in us. (These are reformatted from Instagram – text on top of image, instead of underneath.)

His presence is so provoking and so humbling. He doesn’t preach, doesn’t lecture, doesn’t write, or debate. He just watches and learns and does his best, and every glance makes me evaluate myself. Every step makes me want to track my own footprints, and every spontaneous dance party shatters all my excuses. Who ever knew that someone so small could change the whole world just by tromping through it?

But back to July … 

July was good to us. This was the first summer in recent memory that wasn’t excruciatingly hot, and so we got to do lots of fun, summer things. Walks, and dandelion fuzz (which he frequently eats on accident, because he gets too close – it’s adorable), parks with friends, car shows, music shows, and all the rest.

Straws are his new favorite, which means at every drive-through window I find myself asking for, “a small cup, only half-full of ice water.” Yes, window-keeper, I know that’s weird. No, I really don’t want a full cup. Don’t give me that look. You gave me a full cup anyway. You’re going to force me to hold up your drive through line while I crack my door and pour out half of this water. You did this to yourself. Don’t sigh at me.

You really appreciate just how much water fits into a small cup when it’s been inverted onto a toddler in a cloth diaper and his car seat.

My continued quest to eradicate plastic from our lives, combined with his affinity for straws (and my modest disappointment in his EIO lid), led me to The Mason Bar Company. Seriously rad. I can’t wait for our lids to arrive. (Which also may or may not have anything to do with the fact that he recently figured out how to make that awesome squeaking noise by sliding the straw up and down in the lid. Oh goodie.)

It’s late as I type this. My brain is tired, and so I’m forfeiting a theme for July. July was about summer, and in the spirit of road trips and beaches and flowers that gently bob in the afternoon breeze – I’m not over-thinking this one.

The school buses are out on the prowl again, but the calendar says we have about a month left of summer. And it strikes me that we’ll never have a summer quite like this one again – where everything is so new, and the vocabulary is so limited. I want to use what we have left to keep learning how to see, and be amazed, and love, and laugh like him.

Which, I guess, means we’re going to have to hit up some new adventures this month. Challenge accepted.