Autumn fun on the beach – with the Miniclub Puddlesuit

Holiday…September…beachtime fun…not necessarily words you’d always put in the same sentence when referring to a British family holiday. In all likelihood, the words ‘holiday’ and ‘September’ would generally end with the words ‘beachtime lets look like we are enjoying shivering in the windswept and quite probably rainsplattered wilderness, trying to pretend the added sand in our lukewarm thermos of coffee is tasty and gives welcome extra texture …’

Happily for me, I don’t like coffee, so that was one potential sand-infested problem averted when we went on our trip to the Isle of Wight this year (sadly I can’t say the same for the car, which is still spilling sand from every orifice despite repeated sweepings…).

And also, amazingly, we got a WEEK OF SUN!

Hence, these photographs of Bubby D’s inaugural sandcastle building and Daddy-burying experiences are real and not simply photoshopped onto idyllic looking backgrounds…

But of course, we couldn’t let a trip to the beach pass by without at least a little bit of wind, damp and chilliness, so we decided to go back one evening for a beach barbecue – while the sun was going down and the beach had been covered by one of those ‘rivers’ that wind their way down from the dunes to the sea on occasion.

The Wee Man and Bubby D were very excited about this, and of course not at all concerned that it was cold, wet, and a little bit windy. I on the other hand did not relish the idea of spending the rest of the holiday with snuffling and regretful children, and so I whipped out their Mini Club puddlesuits.

Initally the Wee Man wasn’t too keen – they start out as cute little backpacks that the kids can carry around easily when they aren’t wearing them as a suit and he rather wanted to just parade around with it on his back, instead of achieving the full body coverage I was after. However, having seen that Bubby D was decked out in hers and that she was subsequently allowed to crawl all over the beach getting as wet and sandy as she liked, he seemed to understand the potential and consented to wearing it as I intended. Bubby D appeared pleased too. As a crawler rather than a walker currently she often gets quite upset when wanting to cross outside surfaces that she doesn’t fancy putting her knees on – and cold wet sand is one of these – but with waterproof double layered material covering her legs she could crawl around to her heart’s content.

 

The night drew on, the holes dug by the Wee Man grew bigger, the puddles to jump in grew deeper and the amount of fire-cooked food dropped down Bubby D’s front grew larger, but still both kids remained warm and dry. In fact, I’m considering using a puddlesuit even while inside as a brilliant bib solution, as it was very easy to wipe clean, provided total coverage and dried off in no time ready for an outing again the next day – great for baby led weaning.

As the Autumn goes on, and our luck with the sun inevitably runs out, I can see these getting a lot more use – particularly Bubby D’s since she still shows no sign of walking in the near future and the puddlesuit means she can get around by herself in the playground or the garden without getting cold and wet…and of course when she does decide that upright is the way to be, she can don her boots and join big brother in jumping in muddy puddles too!