We had a wonderful time in Destin! The best part about it was watching Mason's reaction to everything. Before we left, a friend told me about an experience in which she had enjoyed seeing the reaction of someone's "unaccustomed eyes" to the beach. And that's exactly what happened. Although we'd been talking about going to the beach for quite awhile, and Mason would ask me often when we were going, I really didn't think he could understand what the beach was without having experienced it, even though he'd seen pictures of it.
As we approached Destin, and the sand dunes came into view, he said, "Mama, big dirt!." I explained to him that the "white dirt" wasn't really dirt but sand. As soon as we checked in to the condo, we went down to the beach. I think Mason was really overwhelmed at first and didn't know how to react to the sand and the ocean. But he loved it immediately! He never could figure out why his feet would "sink" in the sand after the waves came up, and that was a curiosity to him the entire time we were there. He loved playing in the sand, but he didn't much care for having sand all over him. He kept going to the water to wash his hands off and then got aggravated when he had to do that over and over and over. The second day we were there, I asked him what he thought of the waves. He looked out at the water and started waving with his hand! I tried to explain to him that the water was making waves, but I don't know that he ever comprehended the different waves I was talking about.
The weather was beautiful! We spent most of our time on the beach, but we went shopping, too. And we went to the Gulfarium one day and saw the dolphin and sea lion shows. The week came to an end all too quickly. Mason was not very happy about going back home to "sippi" - as he calls it - but I don't think Seth and I were either!