To the beach and back

We returned to the Durban beaches along the Indian Ocean.  It was a perfect day for the beach - warm and slightly breezy (are all you on the East Coast feeling jealous?).  The water was a gorgeous blue-green with a large expanse of beautiful sand.  It is definitely one of the nicest beaches I have ever visited.

After our last visit we realized that there are free public swimming pools at some of the beaches.  There was a giant wading pool that was perfect for Miranda.

After the pool we went to the beach and played in the sand.  Miranda loves to play with her bucket and shovels.  She pretended to make soup in her bucket and eat it off the sand shovel.  Then she took an actual bite of sand.  Yuck!  After seeing my response she took another bite and then another bite (I am not exaggerating - she ate three bites of sand). These were not small nibbles but mouthfuls of sand. 

I have no idea what sand does to your digestive system but I guess we're about to find out!

I took Miranda to play in the waves and she liked it much better than last time (the waves were also much smaller).  Instead of wanting to be held, she stood in front of me as the waves came.  She especially liked the feel of the wave receding and the water pulling against legs.

When we were playing in the sand, I received a phone call from my South African adoption agency saying that Miranda's abridged birth certificate was ready.  This meant that we needed to go to the Home Affairs office in the afternoon, so our trip to the beach was cut short.  We went to the Home Affairs office and picked up the birth certificate for Miranda Joy Sheriff! 

The birth certificate had her new ID number (South African equivalent to a Social Security Number) which meant we could apply for her passport.  She will travel home on a temporary South African passport. Since it is a temporary passport it should only take 2 or 3 days to process.  The paperwork process is moving along...