Summer Wrap-Up: Weekend in Paraparam

In mid-December we decided to take a weekend mini-holiday. Sebastian was still little enough to be comfortably carried in our baby carriers for a couple hours at a stretch, and happy to sleep in them. He wasn't eating much solids yet, and he was good at sleeping in the car. He had been bed sharing with us long enough that we felt we could make that work easily enough in a hotel. And he wasn't yet mobile. We figured it was a relatively easy time to take him on holiday.

We booked a place on Paraparaumu Beach for two nights. Sebastian obligingly slept through the entire drive up. The day we arrived there happened to be having a craft fair, so we wandered through the stalls and also the various shops and also scoped out a good place to hang out on the beach the following day

The weather obliged with sun and warmth and only a little of the wind that can be quite strong on Paraparaumu Beach. That evening we ate dinner out for only the second time since Sebastian was born. He was just old enough to sit in a high chair and share nibbles of our fish and veggies.

The next day we set up our beach-tent in the sand and Sebastian got his toes in the ocean for the first time. He liked the sand, squishing it between his fingers and eating an alarming amount of it. The water was okay but the tiny wavelets scared him. After this adventure he got a wash off under the beach shower. After I dried him off and changed his clothes, we he had a nurse and a nice nap while Loren walked to the nearby shops to get us lunch. It was a lovely, laid back summer day at the beach. The tent was an excellent investment, as most beaches around here don't have much to offer in the way of shade.


Sebastian and Loren relaxing in our beach tent

Sebastian sampling the local sand

On the last day we had an early morning wander on the beach before heading home. One of the nice things about having a baby is it gets you up and out of the hotel early, and you get to wander the streets at an hour when most tourists aren't up and about yet.

It was all in all an easy, laid back summer get-away. We are low key vacationers and our usual M.O. involves a lot of wandering around our chosen location on foot. Sebastian spent a lot of time in our baby carriers while we wandered on the beach, and in and out of shops, and so on. He also took most of his naps this way.

These days he is crawling and getting very close to walking, and he's too heavy for me to comfortably baby-wear for any significant length of time. I'm sure he would still make an excellent traveling companion today, though perhaps in a very different way. But wow what a difference 3 months makes!

 
Walking along the beach with Sebastian asleep in his Ergo carrier.