Last I wrote, I was knee-deep in skid vacation hell, due to my SO's constant coddling and seeming need to entertain SD10 and SS13 almost every minute of the day, and skids inability to entertain themselves, which resulted in no alone time for us. Which was even more frustrating given that we had literally spent months researching resorts that had a teen and kids club so that (in my SO's words), skids could "have something else to do so we could do our own thing and not have them with us every minute". But when the time actually came, his daddy guilt reared its ugly head and he felt bad encouraging SS especially to go to the teen club, since SS had decided he "didn't really like it". SS doesn't want to make friends. He wants to be by his dad or on his phone, or by a PS4, that's it. I could have called this. Since the Teen club didn't have a PS4 (it did have other video game systems and lots of other stuff), SS wasn't interested. So my SO literally spent hours a day playing catch with skids in the pool. I did a lot of reading, drinking, making new friends, and tanning. I actually did have a good time. To be fair, my SO isn't normally this much of a Disney dad, (although he does spoil skids sometimes) he just had these super high expectations for this vacation.  

By day 4 or 5 I couldn't keep quiet anymore, and calmly told him that he was spending his entire vacation coddling skids and feeling like he had to be entertaining them every minute of the day. I said I'd been watching, and no other parent was playing catch in the pool for hours at a time. 10 minutes tops, then they were off to drink while their kids played with each other. I said, you see SD looking even slightly bored and you are jumping to offer to make sand castles or look for shells, when just prior to that you wouldn't look for shells with us. Him: "I wanted to do those things".  I said, No you did not. You wanted nothing to do with it when we were doing them, you only did it because you felt like she was bored and you had to entertain her and you are terrified they aren't having a good time on this trip. They are 10 and 13, you should not be their sole entertainment. Tell them to go play with each other! I mean, isn't that half the point of having 2 kids? I said, you specifically said you wanted time for us too, and we picked a resort with a teen and kids club- sometimes kids need encouragement to go do things on their own, so tell them to go! He got a little huffy and pouted for a bit, but actually told SS to go to the teen club the next day (he still didn't go), and encouraged SD to go to the kids club (she gladly went). SS stayed in the room for a while so my SO and I got some adult pool time, and he even refrained from inviting SD on our walk on the beach the next morning. I think around the time that both skids broke items in the gift shop and my SO lost it on them, he started rethinking this magical family vacation. 

Sometime during the trip, my SO also started this fun new thing where every time he would jokingly wrestle with me in the pool, or make this face he makes at me, he would immediately turn to skids and do the exact same to them. As if he had to give us each the same amount of attention. (This has never been a thing before, and it kept up during the flights home also). FFS. This better only be a vacation thing.  *dash1*

The silver lining to it all is that HE said he is a bit "Mexico'd out" for a while, and that we will not be doing a trip like this again with skids...If we go to Mexico again, it will just be him and I. Any skids trips will be much shorter and only to places with plenty of activities. Which is fantastic, because I would rather eat nails than put myself through that mess again, but at least I don't have to be the one to say it.