Attack of the Jellyfish

Today we went to a Virginia State Park to go to the beach and to try to catch some crabs for dinner. We normally go to the ocean when we go to the beach while we are in Virginia Beach but you can't catch crabs in the ocean b/c the water is too rough. So instead we decided to go to the bay where the water is calm and boats come in and out which we thought might be entertaining to the kids. The bay has a nice beach where the kids could play while Bill, my dad and I waded into the water to catch crabs. The first problem that arose was that Sam didn't understand that he couldn't really swim in the bay. He kept telling me he wanted to go swimming and was pointing way out into the bay and said he wanted to go into the cold water. I realized that he was confused that we were at an actual body of water rather than a pool like the beach club in McKinney. The beach club is a pool/beach for one of the subdivisions in McKinney where many of our friends live. There is sand like a beach and brown water (like an ocean) but then it turns into a pool. Sam loves to go into the pool part, which apparently he considers the cold water, and swim with me. So, today he thought we were at some type of beach club and it took me several times of explaining to him that this was real water, it was deep and that fish, crabs and jellyfish live in the water. He finally got it and was content to play in the sand with Claire and my mom.

I found a hermit crab shortly after we got there and made the mistake of giving it to Claire. She carried it with her for several minutes and then buried it in some sand. Poor crab! Then she kept digging in different spots saying, "Where my crab go!?" It was a little humorous but I hope the innocent little crab did eventually get itself out of the dry sand and back to the water.

It was clear pretty quickly that there were jellyfish in the water. I grew up going to the ocean and bay to swim so getting stung by jellyfish was something that was fairly routine in my childhood. Bill on the otherhand has never been stung by a jellyfish and tends to really panic when he sees them. We were planning on wading into the water with my dad to try to catch crabs using small pieces of wood that had strings attached to them and chicken necks tied on the strings. Sounds gross, I know, but I have used this method to catch crabs several times in my life and it works. After a couple of minutes of seeing all of the jellyfish in the water Bill ended up back on shore with my mom and the kids while I assisted my dad with the crabs. I could feel that I was getting stung by jellyfish and so could my dad but it didn't bother me too much. Then I heard a scream and Sam crying and knew that he had been stung. I made my way back to the shore and fortunately the nice people sitting on a boat next to us had some meat tendorizer, which is the best thing to put on a jellyfish sting not urine like they do on Friends. We had forgotten our meat tendorizer so were thankful that someone else had some. The sting was on Sam's foot and he continued to cry and ask for a band aid. We took care of the sting and then he started complaining about his leg. We put more meat tendorizer on that area and I finally got him to calm down. After he ate lunch he was wiped out and laid on a beach blanket under the umbrella. Then he said he didn't feel well so we packed up and left the beach.

Sam is completely fine but his leg has a couple of welts on it. They don't seem to bother him but they seem worse than any jellfish sting I have ever had. Hopefully we won't see any jellyfish at the beach in North Carolina next week or else Sam will never make it into the water!