12 January 2012

Counting to Seven

Mr and Mrs de Elba, 
Justamum and Justadad, 
ARE YOU READY?  GO!





One, two ..... three, four ......., five six ....... seven!


In these pictures I have omitted the hundreds of people also in the surf.  It loses a genuine-ness, but I omit them for time reasons.  And because some of them were not pretty.  (As a general rule, wouldn't you wear BIGGER swimmers the bigger you got?  Not so in Australia.  It seems that the bigger you are, the flimsier the swimmers you wear.  Yeesh.)

Buzz often played out in the deep with Belle as they are both older (6 and 7 years old) and are very safe.  It will be a few more years before we choose not to include them in the head count, but they gave us no panicky moments this year.  They could usually be found together, Buzz in a black shirt with red sleeves, Belle in a black shirt with cute little purple swimmers.

Jessie and Banana are four and five years old, and they loved playing in the shallow water together, splashing in the waves and running up the beach squealing.  Jessie was in a purple shirt and swimmers that angered her frequently for no apparent reason, and Banana wore white and light pink (I think.)

Woody and Boris are two and three years old, and they were usually playing in the sand and fighting over beach toys.  Although they became more confident in the water towards the end of the week, they started off both unwilling to get wet, so this limited their potential for getting lost to sand, crowds, and leaving the beach rather than drowning.  This lowered our anxiety rating from 98% all the way down to 91%.  Awesome.  Woody in a red shirt with blue sleeves, light blue shorts, Boris in light and dark blue shirt and blue swimmers.

Baby Bimi is one year old and she was generally with the adult doing the head-counting.  We still counted her though.  It seemed right.  She wore white with pink like Banana.


One, two, three ....... four-five-six-seven!
At times, a swimming child would decide to come up to the beach and join the sandcastle-makers.  This was relatively easy to count like the example above, and sometimes gravitated into "One, two ....... three-four-five-six-seven," which was also easy.


One-two-three-four-five-six-seven!
Perhaps the easiest configuration of all occurred when everyone decided it was time to build sandcastles and fight.  Often, two or three of the adults would go for a swim when this happened.


One, ....... um, two, ....... three, four ....... five? Yes, five ....... six .......   .......   oh crap.
This didn't often happen.  It was usually resolved by looking behind the shade tent, or a little further up the beach.

8 comments:

Swift Jan said...

LOVE your pictures! They are way better than photos!!

Seven children at the beach. That my friend is what I like to call... courageous!

Justamum said...

Love it! You recounted it so perfectly! Love the pic of Woody and Boris fighting lol. They all made it back home due to our endless counting :-)

tinsenpup said...

I have enough trouble keeping track of two little stick figures and frankly, one of them is fairly independent these days. Congratulations on bringing them all home at the end of the day!

Hippomanic Jen said...

I love the stick figures. YOu are so clever. And I'm glad that you can now count so well!

Hippomanic Jen said...

And, BTW, are all the adults swimming topless? I know that two of the three of them are men, but...

Givinya De Elba said...

Good point. Maybe that's the menfolk and some random man. I mean, Justamum and I would love to claim it was one of US in our confidence, but without a few huge giant circles on the chest region, we realise it could never be mistaken for either of us ...

Tracy P. said...

Oh my! I would be counting like crazy! You are brave!!

Unknown said...

Shivers. Just realised next time I go to the beach with my sister we'll be counting to ten. Holey Doley.