Kira's First Beach Experience

On the seventh day of our cruise, we arrived at Grand Turk where there was a gorgeous beach right by the dock.  It's proximity to the ship made it easy to just hop off the boat and walk onto white hot sand.  Although it was the last port in the Caribbean that we visited, it was the first time we set foot on a beach.  For Kira, the experience was both good and bad.

First of all, Kira was not feeling well that day.  She had developed a cough (very mild) and a runny nose.  She was sneezing a lot causing snots to fly everywhere.  Right when we stepped off the boat, Kira struggled to shield herself from the blinding sunlight.  She didn't have any sunglasses and was so frustrated with the squinting, she eventually just shut her eyes.  As we got closer to our spot on the beach, I started getting nervous about her skin's exposure to the sun.  We were in such a rush to get off the ship, I didn't put any sunblock on her thinking I would have a chance once we found our beach spot.  But it took us a little longer, and the sun was more intense than expected.  As I started applying the sunblock, Kira started rubbing her face and eventually the sunblock got into her eyes.  I think it was really irritating.  We finally sat down on our spot and I picked up a towel to clean the sunblock out of her eyes, but the towel had sand on it and I ended up getting sand in her eyes!  At this point she was having a mild freak out.  So to distract her, I took her down to the water, which I had a feeling she would enjoy because she likes water in general.  I was right, she relaxed immediately.  She even started splashing a bit, however, that caused salt water to get into her eyes!  Now she was really freaking out.  The sun was still really bright and she had all sorts of irritants in her eyes.  I was forced to take her back to our spot on the sand, under a canopy, and just sit with her until she calmed down.  Eventually she blinked all the irritants out of her eyes and she got used to the heat and the brightness.  After sitting together for 20 minutes, she was ready to go into the water again.

Kira had no problem going back into the water.  It was cool and felt refreshing in the tropical heat.  In contrast, she did not like being on the sand.  I tried putting her down a few times, but each time she asked to be picked up, and once I picked her up, she would start fingering the sand on her body.  It seemed as though she didn't like having the little bits stick to her skin.  After A LOT of coaxing, I got her to sit down and enjoy playing a little.

Check out the pictures to see a visual of the experience I just described!