The Hurli-fam: Seashell Girl & Little Whelk

Do you remember how exciting seashells are?

I didn't either. You go to the beach, and there are shells. Most of them are broken, and if you're lucky you'll stub your toe on one that is intact and pretty. Mostly, I have spent the past 10 years avoiding them during walks and jogs along the coastline.

Today, however, I had a 4-year-old on a mission - FIND PRETTY SEASHELLS!

Seashell Girl, with sidekick Little Whelk!

I'm not sure what instigated this adventure, but it was evident from the moment of first-toes-in-the-sand this morning that shell-finding was going to be our primary focus. Luckily, not too long ago Fort Myers Beach pumped in about 75 yards of beach from the middle of the ocean (they do this every so often to expand the beach back out...then a few years later it all washes away...) so there were lots of big and little shells to choose from.

Which means every 17 seconds, I heard this:

"You like this one, Mommy?"

"What about this one? Isn't it pretty?"

"Oooo Mommy! This is a VERY pretty one!"

And so on and so forth for about two hours.

Seashell Girl wasn't the only one in on the action, however:

Auntie MyMy helps with the exploration
(this momma gets down and can't get up, ya know :)

Little Whelk searches - just out of wave's reach :)

About 5 minutes into it we had quite a haul that just kept growing and growing. We had more than a few good finds (we found a handful of olive shells, and even two rare alphabet shells - interesting side note: the lady who writes the blog in the alphabet link is on Sanibel, just across the bridge from Ft. Myers Beach. Sanibel is a leeeeegit shelling beach, world-renowned. Anyway, where was I? :)

Oh yes, our haul.

In addition to our beauties, Tanner and Ellery loaded our bucket with a fair amount of broken shells - ones they firmly believe are as beautiful as the others and therefore deserve not only a trip back to Mimi's house in our bucket, but also a trip back to Denver in our suitcase. So this got me thinking - How do you explain to a 4-year-old that broken shells aren't really worth keeping? To her and her sister, they found them, and therefore are worthy of any and all amounts of specialness you can attribute to a shell (which, apparently, is a lot). No bother that they are broken, ugly, dull, or plain - each little fragment is something beautiful.

I started to go into how we were only keeping the pretty shells and then I came to a sudden halt - there was some sort of underlying social commentary going on here, and I just couldn't continue. How could I sit there and look at those hazel eyes - full of love for each and every shard of calcium - and tell her that we only keep the perfectly formed shiny ones? Only the best for us, baby - we throw everyone else away. WE only associate ourselves with the creme de la creme, the perfects, the Plastics (Mean Girls? Anyone?) If you are broken, damaged, imperfect, we're throwing you out. Something just didn't seem right in that line of thought.

So maybe I thought it out a little too much. I mean, they were just seashells, right?

Whatever the case, we came home with broken shells n' all.

The Most Beautiful Shells
(as determined by Mommy and Seashell Girl)
(aka Our Favorites)
(not all of them are perfects, btw :)

The Broken Beauties
(aka The Shells We May Come Home With, Anyways)

For now, Tanner has moved on to pelican watching and searching for "baby fish" out by Mimi & Dandy's seawall, completely oblivious to the over-arching lesson taught today. But I feel like a good mom for trying to teach it. And more than a little confused about how I'm going to raise two girls to be nice, thoughtful, caring young women when I can't even get through seashell hunting.