It was the baby’s first time to the beach. At the time, Penny was just over a year old, walking (with her hands up in the air for balance – it was the most precious thing), and Alice couldn’t remember the last time we’d been to the beach.
We planned for a long weekend at Dauphin Island. We didn’t need a lot of entertainment, and we wanted to go somewhere we hadn’t been before. Dauphin Island seemed the perfect choice. And it helped that our older daughter was certain it was Dolphin Island (she was a bit disappointed in not seeing any dolphins).
At first, things were great. Both kids loved being in the water, feeling the wind on their face and the gritty sand between their tiny feet. We walked the Audobon Bird Sanctuary and buried each other in the sand on the beach. But it was somewhere during that second afternoon, when we were walking around the Sea Lab when I noticed Penny slowing down. Her cheeks getting a little rosy. Her mood dampening.
I hoped – ever so hard – that it was simply she was tired from a busy day and her cheeks were rosy from the bright sunshine. But by dinner time, she was asleep on my lap, trying to rest during her fever.
She was miserable that evening. She felt awful and couldn’t get comfortable when she was trying to go to sleep. We planned to leave for home early the next morning and hopefully get her some comfort in her own room.
As the kids were settling down to sleep, then Alice showed up in mine and Kyle’s bedroom, which was connected by a bathroom. Standing with her feet in the bathroom but her face toward the door, she vomited everything in her little stomach on our bed.
Mind you, if she had turned, she would have hit the toilet. But I digress.
I don’t know how late it was by the time the sheets were clean and dry, but by then Kyle also was vomiting – the two of them, who had eaten ham earlier that day, had food poisoning. So we have a baby sick, a kid sick, and a husband sick.
And then there’s me.
I spent the last night of our beach trip in a dark room with Penny, texting my friends, telling them about all the fun we’d had so far on the trip – and why we were coming back early. For the record, it was a good trip. Alice and I had some great mommy-and-me time at the beach, watching crabs, catching butterflies and building sand castles. Penny loved blowing bubbles and tried her hardest to swim like her big sister. We even accidentally brought a hermit crab inside one evening after collecting seashells and then had the honor of releasing it into the wild. Overall, at least for me, it was a great trip.
But it was several years before I could convince anyone else to go back to the beach.
