Sand, sea, family of three

By Allison Spence

It’s 2019, the year of Eleanor! For those of you who have just started reading, Eleanor is our unborn baby girl. According to our doctors, she will be born around February 20th. We had told ourselves we wanted one last trip before she was born with just Grafton, our son.  So that’s what we did. 

We planned a last minute trip to Hilton Head for the new year because there’s just something so satisfying about salt air and sandy feet. We arrived at the hotel and headed straight for the beach. I placed Grafton on the ground and he immediately started to cry. The poor kid already trips over his own feet and the sand was a much harder task for him to conquer than we thought. To add to his fear of the sand, the ocean slowly crept up and I watched the panic reach his eyes. I was determined to get him to warm up to his surroundings. I took his shoes and socks off and slowly ran away begging him to chase me. He didn’t budge. “Grafton come on buddy, come to mom.” He turned and reached up for Garrett. I sat down in defeat, Garrett joined me and that was when Grafton tugged on our shoes. He wanted us to take our shoes off! We quickly obliged. 

His fears are our fears, his experiences are our experiences. If he was going to be forced to feel grainy cold sand under his toes so would we. We returned to the beach two more times that day and twice the next day, Grafton’s orders. 

I worried he wasn’t going to adjust well to a baby sister, I worried I would miss moments with him. Now I know he will be just fine, we will be just fine. It’s already 2019 and here we are conquering fears, making memories and soaking up our last weeks as a family of three. Cheers!