No Fun Beach Trip

I'm calling shenanigans on beach trips.  The beach, a place I dearly love, is no longer any fun.

It first happened in California, when I was visiting on maternity leave with Lani and Ro.  My sister was also in town with her son.  We decided to go to the beach.  It took us nearly two hours to actually leave.  Stuff had to be packed, diapers had to be changed, more stuff (that we previously forgot) had to be packed, another diaper change, then whoops, everyone was hungry because it's lunch time, so we ate, followed by yet more packing, more diaper changing, and then everyone was crying and we realized that the car doors won't close all the way with 3 carseats in the back, but we'd spent half our day getting to the beach, we couldn't stop.  We finally left, turned back at the last minute to grab suscreen.

We arrive at the beach.  It is hot.  We are each schlepping 40 pounds of supplies and three children across a vast desert.  We sweat and squint into the sun.  We brought two large umbrellas, and none of them work.  We attempt to put sunscreen on our boys as they roll around in the sand.  We drop the watermelon, it is wasted. We are stranded without any of the comforts and conveniences that we rely on to deal with our children. Ilan cries while I try to make shade for him.  Zachary will not stop filling a little boy's hole with sand.  Roan, as always, pretends to be a very loud train.  Erica and I exchange a look.  The look says, "can we go home now?"

When we leave, we experience a classic beach conundrum, unexplained by logic or science.  Our stuff will not fit back into our bags.  It has, somehow, during our time at the beach, gotten bigger.  Much bigger. Or our bags have gotten smaller. Everything is heavy with sand.  

Here is Roan during the terrible no fun ABYC beach trip of March 2012. 

Because I am a masochist with a terrible short term memory I truly love the beach, we went back last weekend, this time to the Rockaways in Queens.  I was thinking that surely, with my husband along to create an equal adult / child ratio, the beach would be fun again.  

Here is what I love about the beach: swimming in the ocean, floating on my back far from shore, laying in the sun, playing smash-ball, eating cold watermelon, running into the water as fast as I can, the feeling of a powerful wave crashing over me while I'm safe underwater, my fingers dug in the sand, making drip castles, salt on my skin on the drive home, salt in my hair, the resulting tan.

Did I experience any of this at the beach with my two children?  No.  The most achievable thing is probably the watermelon, but you only have two arms and when it comes down to watermelon or sand toys you suck it up and leave the watermelon at home.

Here is our Rockaway beach experience: we get in the car, the battery is dead.  Some neighbors give us a jump, Ro plays with their kids, we hang out with the neighbors.  Finally, we leave for the beach an hour and a half after we intended to.  Our schedule is thrown off - Ilan does not nap in the car, we can not find parking, the beach is crowded with people with stereos and terrible taste in music.  We set up camp: umbrella, blanket, chair, towel, food and water, within seconds everything is covered in sand.  The baby has sand in all his crevices, there is sand on our pizza, we are helpless to clean it, because we have so much sand on our hands.  When everything is somewhat de-sanded we lay back, exhale, and relax.  And that's when Roan says he has to go poop.

You know what? All the hassle would be worth it if our kids had some fun. I would settle for these new hard work beach trips if I felt like I was passing the torch, enabling my children to love the beach as I always did. But last week, they whined and moaned and Roan got sun stroke. Nobody had any fun.

In this photo Ilan sits in Jay's chair while Jay accompanies Roan to the baking hot public restroom and waits for Roan to poop, during the no fun Rockaway beach trip of June 2012.