4th of July on Fire Island

For the 4th of July holiday, we spent the long weekend on Fire Island with friends and babies. We rented a house and invited 3 couples to go in on it with us. In total there were 8 adults, 2 babies and one toddler. It was an exhaustingly fun weekend.

Fire Island is a favorite weekend getaway for Ryan and I ever since we got a 1/4 share of a house last summer. We spent 5 weekends in the Kismet area of Fire Island last summer and grew to love the campy feeling of the island, the short commute, the sparse beaches and the friendly people.

There are no cars allowed on the island, so there are also no "roads" on the island. The streets consist of sidewalks for walking and biking. Lots of biking. You often hear the "tink, tink" sound of a bike as it is approaching you from behind. You also hear this sound when a bike is approaching an intersetion of sidewalks, as if it is a car winding up a curvy mountain pass and cannot see the approaching cars around the bend.

This past weekend we shared the house with our long time friends Joe,Vanessa (with Joseph - 2yrs), Liz (with new boyfriend Lester), and our new neighborhood friends Dia, Josh (with Maurice -- 10 months).

I don't need to recount many events of the weekend activities. The days seemed to run the same. The moms were up at the crack of dawn with little ones. Sometimes the dad's arose early for coffee hankerings. Then there was time spent on the beach, walking throughout the island, much time in the kitchen and then the evenings after the babies went down.

It seemed that each day belonged to one of the babies for the purposes of disrupting the other babies' sleep. The first night we were there, Maurice cried and cried and cried, thus preventing Joseph from going to bed much before 11pm. The second night Fay was up at 3:30, staring and screaming at her parents like a caged animal from her porta-crib. Finally I nursed her back to sleep. The third night, Joseph refused to go to sleep and he sat up with the parents while we played two rounds of celebrity (charades with a twist). I think Joseph watched 3 or 4 rounds of his favorite Sesame Street episode that night. But Joseph was kind enough not to keep the other babies awake -- just himself.

I must note, for my own humor as I read this post in the future, that Joe gave the most ridiculous clue during our game of celebrity. Celebrity is like charades, but during the first round you can actually speak to describe the clue. The clue is always a well-known person (celebrity). Joe's clue was Gary Gnu (a puppet from the 70's children's show, The great Space coaster). Instead of referencing the tv show. Joe decided to describe the first name "Gary" by referring to a favorite hero of his. He said "The first name of the inventor of Dungeons and Dragons". To which his team replied..."what?!". Of course, no normal person knows who that inventor may be. And we did not win that round.

   

For Fay readers, I will tell you that she crawled A LOT this weekend and interacted really well with the other kids. She showed much interest in Joseph the 2yr old. He would run around and she would try to catch up to him as her belly dragged across the floor in her pseudo crawl. Any day now she'll get that belly off the floor. She looks like she's just about there.

Also, Fay hates the beach. After about an hour on the beach, she would get cranky, even before naptime, and as soon as we left, she would cheer up. Also, one day, I was holding her hands and helping her "walk" on the beach. She "walked" directly towards the path which would exit her from the beach. Smart cookie. Knows what she wants.