at the beach

It's supposed to be rainy the rest of the week so we had to go to the beach today.  Tomris has been talking about swimming since we got here.  The temperature was almost warm enough to brave  it at 70 degrees, but it was cloudy and windy today.  I told her I was not swimming - and she told me that was fine, she would swim by herself.  Tomris stripped down to her suit and giggled as she put her feet in the water - but she had my fingers in a tight excited grip.  And that is as far as she went.

Tuana was happy sitting in the sand and crawling around in it.  She would pick up garbage and show it to me.  I'm sure she ate some sand too.  And mostly, she kept herself very busy.

I brought down their kites too.  We bought them last year, and haven't had a good day yet - but today was perfect.  Empty beach and windy.  We got Tomris's kite right up in the air - a traditional diamond kite with a long tail.  Tomris giggled and held the handle, letting it out farther and farther.  Later I realized she was probably inadvertently letting the string go because the wind was pulling so much.  After about 5 minutes of perfect flying, the wind snatched it away from her hands.  The handle bounced along to fast for me to catch, tangling in the nearby telephone wires and continuing to fly in the wind - teasing us all.  Tomris cried and cried.  I held her, and kissed her, and told her its too bad, but there was nothing to be done about that kite until the wind died down - and even then, I wasn't very hopeful.  But, an hour later, the wind did die.  The kite withered to the ground in the community a few blocks in, and Tolga climbed up and got it - collecting as much of the string as he could before cutting it.

Teoman's kite was was a trick kite.  I got it on sale - and I thought - how tricky could it be?  It had two handles made for guiding the tricks, but what it really did was made it impossible to handle.  I had Teoman hold the end up about 15-20 feet away from me.  It immediately caught the wind but never raised more then 20 feet in the air before taking a speedy nose dive into the sand.  I tried it a few more times before Tolga headed over to lend a hand.  At this point - I had the kite in the air again and it dove.  I pulled one handle and it circled madly again and again - spiraling but not crashing nor going higher.  I had no control and it took a diver towards Teoman.  I told Teoman to run and he did.  Tolga was laughing, and so was I because the kite didn't crash but flew it's tight pinwheel circles.  Tolga tried to catch it but had to duck because the spin was picking up speed.  It came around and the kite string caught on his tooth and pulled his head up.  We were both falling over with laughter, but not for long because the kite went after him.  Tolga hit the sand shielding himself before I could finally crash it's nose down to stick in the sand.
So much for a trick kite.