I suppose we could have just stayed home and read on the couch, because reading is what we ended up mostly doing the other day when Baby-Girl and I went to the beach.
We tried a new beach, one we’d driven by before but never stopped at, one that proved to be less swimmable than we had hoped. So, instead of swimming, we played catch with shells for a while, and then Baby-Girl made a fort using towels and the back of my chair. While she built, I read.
Some time later, when I noticed how quiet she’d grown, I turned around and found her reading underneath her now-completed fort.
“I’m on page 147,†she said, as if that explained things, and continued reading. So I went back to my book, too, and we both read for the rest of our time at the beach.
I suppose, then, that we could have just stayed at home to read.
But I’m sure glad we didn’t.