Vacation Post #7: The Beach

Late Wednesday afternoon, we headed to the beach! It was starting to get a little chilly with the ocean breeze, but still the weather was very nice.

We had been talking about the beach a lot leading up to this trip. I wanted Audrey to be excited about it, but I was also pretty sure that she would not like the beach. She is kind of prissy when it comes to being dirty, and sand has never been a texture that she likes. We did have our “beach in a bowl” that we played with a while back, but even with that sand she never actually touched it. She just used cups to move it around from bowl to bowl.

So, Audrey was acting really excited to go to the beach…but would she really like it once we were there in the middle of all that sand??

We first put her down in the sand with these beach toys, and she was pretty excited to play with them. She stood and squatted down and played with the sand a little, being very careful not to get sand on herself. Then she discovered a little bit of sand on her foot. “Wipe it off Mommy! Off!” So I wiped the little bit of sand off her foot, and she played for a few more seconds before noticing more sand on her foot. This continued for a few minutes.

Finally, she decided she was done with the sand. We tried to walk down by the water, but she was already kind of grumpy and decided she did not like the water either ("too loud")…here she is with Daniel, who was emphasizing her grumpiness.
She did, however, like the “ducks”. They were actually birds, but Audrey was very insistent that we call them ducks. She and Daniel ran and chased them for a little while, and that helped to brighten her mood.

I wasn’t ready to give up on playing in the sand. I sat down and started to play, and Audrey quickly agreed to come and play with me. We made some fish and airplanes using molds, and then we worked on a sand castle…just like Cinderella’s castle at Disney World. That got Audrey excited, “Princess go in there! ” she said.
The beach outing ended on a positive note. Audrey was finally having fun in the sand, and she didn’t want to leave. We’re going to another beach on Friday. This time we will have to work on walking in the sand and getting close to the water. Should be fun!