Charleston Road Trip

School's.  Out.  For.  Summer!  So we decided to go down to our brand new city by the ocean and have a look around.  On the way down, we stopped and bought Benjamin a cake/lolli-pop (only in America).  It was not immediately clear to him that he was supposed to eat it. Is it a toy of some kind?  We have yelled at him so many times for eating things that he isn't supposed to eat (leaves, sticks, coins, the Nerf football, the cats) that he's probably a little gun-shy when it comes to tasting new objects.

Finally, he took a bite.

We drove around James Island and Mt. Pleasant, two suburbs of Charleston that we might live in.  Then we went to one of the nearby beaches, Folly Beach.

We went seashell hunting.  Aunt Larissa and I used to hunt for shells at Assateague Island on family beach trips.  "Snail shells" were the coin of the realm.

We spotted sailboats, wind-surfers, and airplanes.

The first time we went to the beach, he didn't want to touch the sand or the water.  The second time, he liked the sand but still hated the water.  This time, eh, the water's not so bad.

As long as it's less than shin-deep.

 Grandpa has a story about me at the beach when I was a toddler.  I fearlessly headed off down the beach for a long while before I realized I didn't know where I was.  My Dad was following at a discrete distance to secretly find out how far I'd get before I looked around and realized I was lost.  Benjamin headed off down the beach himself on this trip, but he was after the kite-surfers that were about a half-mile down the beach (I don't think he has a good grasp of distances just yet).  He kept turning around to make sure that I was following and to shout detailed yet incomprehensible instructions to me ("Man Kite!  Two!), but I think he would have attempted the journey on his own if I hadn't grabbed him.