After the babies' lunch, we took them for a walk through the few blocks nearby and found a Starbucks for a quick iced tea and bathroom break. It was at this point we first discovered that Laguna Beach appears to be a town without a changing table. It's odd - I just expect that public restrooms will have changing tables. Must be a product of living in San Francisco, I guess, where even men's restrooms have changing tables in some spots.
We got back to the beach just in time to see the family off on their trip back home. It was around 2pm and we had the rest of the day to spend in town. And while Laguna Beach seems to be a family-friendly area, it is not a double-stroller friendly area. And the hotel room is not air conditioned. So we decided to take advantage of the "private beach" the hotel advertised. There was no good way to get there with the strollers, so we were told we could leave them in the terrace while we went down to the beach. Only it was a steep staircase descent down to the beach, which might be a little precarious with our heavy baby carriers in tow. The manager at the restaurant devised a plan that had us roll out the front of the hotel and around to the side of the banquet room where the wedding reception had taken place. We left the strollers there and headed out the other side to the promenade above the beach. There they set up a series of chaise longues and chairs with a big beach umbrella.
We arranged everyone and then I carefully unpacked each baby and took him (or her) down to the beach to put baby feet in the ocean. Oddly, the sound of the waves seemed to really scare all the babies. I say oddly because they sleep with a noise machine that is set to "ocean waves". They must know the difference. Max didn't seem to mind the water on his toes, but Daniel was not pleased and Caroline pulled her little legs up as the water washed toward them.
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| Max clinging to me at the water's edge |
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| He really did not seem happy on the beach |
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| I should've found a pretty girl to take our picture - then he would've smiled! |
I tried to explain to them that we could just walk along toward the north, keeping the ocean on our left the whole way, and we'd be home in a matter of days (Google Maps indicates it would be about 8.5 days - with no breaks). This did not seem to put them at ease.
So we went back to the chairs and decided to just hang out on the beach in the shade of our umbrella.
Max was first on my chaise:
Then Daniel, in his beach hat:
Caroline stayed in her car seat a bit longer, but when she emerged she determined she wanted to try out a couple of different beach looks:
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| I call this the old lady look |
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| That's what we call a round of applause |
Max felt a little left out without pictures in his hat:
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| Showing that Max really does look quite a bit like Daddy |
Daniel really wanted to get his hand on the camera:
But Caroline was kicking up her heels and enjoying it all:
By the time the sun had shifted, we were tuckered out and ready to go inside and rest a bit. Once inside, Caroline passed out on the bed nearly instantly. You may be able to see that the humidity and four days without a bath were doing a number on Caroline's curls:
The next two hours were PAINFUL. We had tired, hot babies in a hot, muggy hotel room. It was easily ten to fifteen degrees warmer and considerably more stagnant in our room than it was outside. We had plans to meet my friend Jill for dinner around 7:15 on the terrace, but we packed the babies up and headed down a bit earlier just to get out of the sauna. The minute they were out in the cool ocean air they calmed down, though, and were angels throughout dinner. We fed them at the table after we ate and Max was so overcome with his flirting that he got a case of the uncontrollable giggles and Jill had to pass him over to me so he could finish his bottle. We're not sure WHAT he thought was so silly, since his view was of me, Caroline, and the sunset:
I think it was Caroline's hair:
The next morning we checked out, packed up the car, and headed out of town. We stopped for a few hours in Castaic (just at the southern end of the Grapevine, near Magic Mountain) to visit with Joe's cousin Cathie and her son and the kids managed to go through three bottles and five diapers in the few hours we were there. Then it was back to the Stockdale Highway and the Best Western and IHOP.
Tuesday morning we made very good time getting out of Bakersfield and were making good time up the Interstate when Max had the very first roadtrip meltdown we'd experienced. He made a lot of "I'm going to poop now" sounds, and then proceeded to scream unrelentingly. We were only 40 minutes away from Livermore, but I wasn't planning to listen to him scream for 40 minutes, so we pulled of at the next exit and he got to go for a diaper change at the bathroom at Pea Soup Andersen's (where they had a changing table!) I think he planned it just so he could visit with HaPea and SweePea. I would've made the boys pose for a picture in the big cut-out in front, only I realized that if we held them up to peer through the face holes, there would be nobody left to snap the picture but Caroline...and her photography skills have really not matured yet.
After the brief rest we made it to Livermore where we took a protracted rest, feeding the babies their bottles and some mangoes, then playing and resting, having dinner, feeding another bottle, and then driving the final leg of the trip home.
The best part of the trip? When I walked through the front door I found that my brother had organized all the baby crap in the living room and all the other crap in the kitchen and dining room and my mother had hired people to come clean the house.
I think I should leave town more often!
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