Baby Sea Turtles!

For weeks and weeks after moving to Florida I kept thinking to myself "I need to bring my real camera along" whenever we'd go somewhere like the beach. I put it off more and more until, finally, I packed it up and took it with us on one of our Sunday walks on the beach. I was snapping away photos of Em, who looks like such a baby to me in these now, when I looked over to the right and saw a bunch of movement in the sand. It was like there were all these crabs scurrying across it when suddenly it hit me- BABY SEA TURTLES HATCHING FROM THEIR NEST. I yelled at everyone else (Charly, Eliza, and my parents) and we watched as dozens broke out of their eggs and made for the sea. We helped them along as much as possible and I thought of so many analogies of comparing sea turtles to raising kids. For example, there is a fine line in helping them. We could scare away the crabs and the birds, but it was actually detrimental that they get themselves down the beach and into the water themselves. Then, after they get into the ocean, there's not much you can do except pray and offer moral support that they they make it as the seagulls hover over the ocean and who knows what else lurks underneath. Every parent on Earth: sound familiar?

After they were all done hatching, we played with Em on the beach as she maniacally picked up fistfuls of sand and threw them at us. I don't know if you've ever been as happy as a toddler about to throw sand at someone, because it's pretty dang happy. Eventually we stripped her soaking wet romper off and I have all these cute photos of her in her diaper with her hair sticking straight up and these big evil grins as she clenches the sand in her hand. Also, I miss that face in the next photo. That used to be the face Em made 95% of the time as she tried to figure the world out, and she doesn't make it nearly as much now.

Anyhow, I was in the middle of blogging our Idaho adventures when I remembered this day, and when I looked back at the photos and how much Em had change in what is almost exactly a year later, I knew I had to get them up here quickly before I forgot again! Back to your regular scheduled programming now ;).
Also, I really liked the shells on the beach that day: