My little surfer girl

We were delighted when we received our pack through to take part in the #PetitFilousFirsts challenge and Monkey was excited at the thought of all the fromage frais she was going to get to eat.

For a 19 month old she has already done so many firsts, we thought this would be a good challenge to do something different. Two things both Mr TH and I did a lot of pre monkey was to surf and climb, both of which we haven’t yet introduced her to so we thought this would be a good time to do so.

I guess choosing Bank Holiday Monday to try surfing was always going to be a big gamble as the weather is usually a pretty grim, but when we made the decision we were enjoying lovely sunny warm weather. In hindsight this may have been summer 2016, we hope we haven’t missed it.

So, feeling optimistic, we got the surf boards out, fixed the fins, scraped off the old wax and made sure we had some new. Mr TH and I squeezed into our wetsuits and decided the coast would be the best place to get Monkeys. This was all done in glorious sunshine in our back garden on Sunday.

“We’re waxing down our surf boards…”

Helping Daddy fix the fins

Of course, on Monday when we woke early to set off to the East coast, the sky was grey, the temperature about 10 degrees cooler and it was rather windy. Still, we packed the car and headed east with optimism and a soundtrack of Beach Boys and Jack Johnson.

On arriving at the coast we could barely see the sea, the wind was cold, on-shore and it was raining. We decided to meet up with my parents and grandma and have some fish and chips while waiting for the weather to clear.

Eventually the clouds broke and the sun shone. However, the wind also picked up making the waves choppy, messy and not the best to give Monkey her first experience of surfing. So we gave up on that idea and chose a walk on the beach instead.

It was ‘bracing’

Not to be beaten in our challenge, but with no time to get back out to the coast we decided to give Issy her first taste of ‘surfing’ with a dry land lesson. She learnt to paddle, jump to her feet and ‘hang ten’ then finished off the session with her first My First Petit Filous, while still sat on the board.

Monkey definitely gave the seal of approval on the Petit Filous as ‘More?’ was requested with her last mouthful. As she had been nice and active for most of the day, and they are low in sugar which is reassuring for something so tasty, we ok’d her request (after a ‘peeeeese’, of course) for a second which went down just as fast.

Both the surf lesson and the Petit Filous went down a treat and we can’t wait to get in the water on our holiday by the sea in a couple of weeks.

This week however, we are hoping the weather clears so we can head to one of our nearby bouldering spots to introduce the Monkey to climbing as a first too… fingers crossed for some drier weather!

 

This post is an entry for BritMums #PetitsFilousFirsts Linky Challenge, sponsored by Petits Filous