So, last week Nicholas and I took a little vacation and spent a few days with a girlfriend of mine at her house by the beach that her family rents every summer. Last year, Nicholas really surprised me in so many ways, we had such a good time. This year, we had NO such luck. While we were there, he barely spoke, tantrumed constantly and was defiant like we had never seen before. So much so, that we had left a day early, I just could not bear another day. The second we pulled into the driveway, Nicholas perked up and yelled, HOUSE! and couldn’t wait to get inside. It was like night and day – he was home… and happy.

While we were there, Nicholas did have a good time and did enjoy being on the beach.

One good thing to come out of the trip was once I got passed the out-right temper-tantrum defiance – he now understands what “do you want to go to your room and go to bed?” means where I don’t think he ever really got it before. Now he’s messing with me – doing things he’s not supposed to be doing, reaching his hand out to do it, then looking at me with his sinister little smile. At least I know he gets it now.

Nicholas loved the boardwalk but would not get on any rides. We asked him many, many times and each time he said No. He was, however, content with either walking around or riding in his stroller (which is shocking) – he hasn’t sat in his stroller for a very long time.

Nicholas did really well at taking all of his supplements while we were away – usually when there is a disruption, everything goes out the window, but not this time.

It was hard watching Nicholas on the beach. You want so much for your child to run in the water and play with the other kids or spend time taking turns playing with their shovels and pails. Nicholas was so “off” this week, it was plain scary and frightening to see. His main interest lied in throwing sand and rocks back into the water. I let him do it as long as I could, then I finally could not take it anymore and put an end to it. On some level, he must have been getting something out of it, but it’s so damn difficult to watch when you see so many other kids playing like kids should be playing. He did spend time playing with his beach toys in the sand, appropriately, I might add – but the time watching him throw the sand and rocks in the water was like someone taking a dagger to my heart.

One day, Daddy joined us and we attempted to go to a beach on the ocean side. It took us over an hour to get Nicholas on the beach. I dont know if it was the amount of people there, the wind, the noise, whatever – but he had a great time once we got over getting him to stay on the beach. He would climb up the sand dunes and roll down them – having the time of his life. Later in the day, he found a sand pit and had a blast playing in it. He had so much fun running from the waves, then running back to the waves only to turn around and run away again.

However, I had an experience on the jungle gym with Nicholas that is still unsettling to me…. I am very thankful that he did not appear to know what was going on. There one beach we go to has 2 jungle gyms on it – the really big, pretty nice ones. They’re a decent stretch apart, but you can access both from the same beach without having to move all of your stuff. Nicholas goes over to the other one – and there is this kid who was 8 climbing on the outside of the big tube slides – and just generally climbing on the outside of the thing. I’m thinking great, just what Nicholas needs to see. Anyway, the kid comes up to me – and says, “hi, I’m so and so(could not understand him) and I’m 8.” and then proceeds to bark at me like a dog. I’m like okay, whatever – kid stuff. He tries to play with Nicholas and I told him (since Nicholas barely spoke while we were there.) that Nicholas was just learning how to talk. So we went back to the other side and hours went by. Later, Nicholas wandered over there again so this kid and another one started playing with Nicholas and he was having a great time. He would run up to them, they would run away – and go back and forth. They were all laughing and having a good time. Then it starts. “The baby is going to kill us. The baby is going to kill us.” (I was like are you kidding me?) Before I could say or do anything, it turned into “kill the baby” – yep, and the baby was Nicholas. I gave it a minute to see if it would change into something else not so offensive, but it did not. So, I intervened – I told them that if they couldn’t play with him without being nasty – then not to look at him, not to talk to him, to pretend he doesn’t even exist – and that they ought to be ashamed of themselves for playing such a horrible game – do they even understand the words they are using. They left him alone. not one parent got up to discipline either one of these kids, nor did anyone care. There were other parents around and NO ONE seemed disturbed by the “kill the baby” thing. Later. the two of them were throwing sand at each other and one got hurt, started crying and turned to me and I just walked away. My friend isn’t un-nerved at all by this because her 1st graders (in an inner-city school) play kill the whatever all the time on the playground. She thought I was nuts when I asked why the school allows it to continue, “it’s just a game” – So, playing with realistic guns is a no-no, but verbally saying they’re going to “kill” someone is perfectly ok. Yeah, that makes sense. It’s a week later and I’ll affected by this. Sure, we played with cap guns, laser tag, you name it when we were kids – but there was something about the way these kids were saying this. We never ran after someone to “kill” them – this somehow is very different and I’m having a hard time verbalizing exactly what I mean. I just wasn’t ready to deal with an issue like this, I thought it would be a while at the very least. Boy was I wrong.