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Well, we made it back to NY!  I know I'm behind on the -- oh, let's estimate 1,000 -- photos of the last month, and I do aim to fill in the gap gradually.  But for now, here are some pictures from Sunday. 

We had an extra full day on our car rental (it was a grand total of $4 more to get it for seven days as opposed to five) so after heaping ridiculous amounts of gear from the minivan into our apartment Saturday night, we instituted full denial Sunday morning and left the madness behind.  We got up, drove ourselves to church, to the grocery store to stock up, to City Island for a meal, and to Orchard Beach.

We only had 20 minutes or so for Josephine to swim, as it turned out the lifeguards quit at 6 pm and the waters have to be vacated then.  That's okay, though, as Sean was already maxing out his conscience by letting her play in waters that close a major city.   I didn't go down to get a close look, but he said it wasn't the most pristine of conditions, and that's not hard to believe.

Someone wasn't bothered in the least, however.

The photo below gives a slight sense of how packed the place was.  It was equally crowded the other direction, twice as deep as you can see here, and the parking lot was only half full.  I'd hate to see the place when that parking lot is at maximum capacity!  But I hear that's standard for beaches up here; I've seen photos of Coney Island in the summertime that are downright frightening.

At least this had an interesting cultural twist.  As we were walking towards the beach we passed a guy wearing a shirt that read, "Orchard Beach.  Little Puerto Rico.  Exit 8B."  Turns out that's totally accurate.  I've never been to the island, but now I feel no need.

(If you're a fan of Where's Waldo, you can play Where's Josephine in the above photo. You're welcome.)  

This next photo is after closing time, and with a little cropping help, makes the place look deceptively peaceful...

Didn't get any great pictures of Clement; he was tucked away in the Ergo the whole time, except for when Sean was holding him while I got Josephine cleaned up.  Which, interestingly, exposed him to vast quantities of comments like "God bless!" from all demographics, including young, rough-looking macho men.  I intend to experiment with this further.  Perhaps it's similar to all the comments I got while pregnant from strangers who felt driven to pronounce my prenatal baby a boy.  I'm curious to see if a dad cradling a newborn consistently elicits attention up here, or just in Puerto Rico.

Here's a smile to tide over grandmothers until the next post: