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| Kadito has already learned to never turn your back on the ocean! Either that or he just really doesn't want to leave. |
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| Laughter is such a beautiful thing. As is that cute little "tickle button"! |
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| He is pointing to some boats in the ocean, I think. This was when we took the golf cart around the island to check out some other sites. |
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| At the turtle sanctuary, we saw turtles of all ages getting prepared to be released to the wild. This is the second stage – outdoor pools. |
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| We bought a little baggie of turtle pellets to feed them (and the gulls). You can see one little pellet at the edge of the pool between Kadin's foot and the turtle. |
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| We went out for lobster for our last dinner in Mexico and Kadito was the Lobster Monster. Grrrh! |
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| And Abuela Baiba was the Lobster Eater! Yum! |
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| Our ferry ride back to Cancun to get to the airport and start the long journey home. He's such an awesome travel buddy. |
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| Kadin started to get a bit of a sand rash from his sandals so we switched to flip flops! It took him a bit of practice to walk in them but he would NOT switch back and just kept on practicing. They have Dora la Exploradora on them. |
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| Speaking of flip flops, Kadito found this one at the cenote and it instantly became a boat… you can see his lips going Brrrroom like the motor. He almost didn't let me throw it away afterwards - wanted to keep it as his toy boat! |
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| Kadito was amazingly drawn to this girl. He wanted to play with her and would follow her around the Cenote, asking me, "¡¿La niña, donde está la niña?!" (The girl, where's the girl?!) Finally, they sat down and Dito could show her all of his toys. Her name was Anuk. |
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| The next day, it was sunny again, and we went on another boat/snorkel trip, this time with a couple from Homer, Kristen and Fernando. I didn't get a good photo of Kadin on the boat, but the snorkelling was awesome with lots of sea turtles and rays (I think manta rays and/or eagle rays?) |
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| View of our cozy home, after I had a chance to clean it up a bit while Kadito was napping. |
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| Kadito finds more friends. The boy in the white lightening shirt was sweet and he and Kadito got along great. The other two he'd met before and they still have a bit more to learn about sharing toys. Dito was asking me why they wouldn't share their truck when he was sharing his car. Eventually, we had to leave and I let the boys know it was because we don't play with kids who don't share. |
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| Ay, que rico! |
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| Our last night in Mahahual and Kadito breaks open his backpack to show off all of his toys. I found the key is to try and have more than one of everything to make sharing a bit easier. However, Kadito made it a bit difficult because he kept losing all of his MatchBox cars in the sand! |
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| Kadito found two more friends! They played for over an hour, running around with "Bebe" the chihuahua puppy, sharing toys, climbing things, pushing me in a hammock, etc. |
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| Yum! After you drink the coconut water from a young coconut, you can eat the coconut on the insde. It's softer and slimier than mature coconut and tastes great, especially with a bit of chile sprinkled on it. Kadito doesn't like the coconut water but he actually liked the coconut with chile. This is his first time starting to like a little bit of spice to his foods. |
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| This was hysterical. We met a nice woman visiting from another part of Mexico who agreed to take our picture. I have 6 pictures with various poses of me trying to get him to face the camera. Ridiculous! But at least it was silly and fun and he was laughing instead of actually pouting like he usually does. The woman said she was watching me earlier and thought I looked like the epitome of a woman thoroughly enjoying motherhood. ❤️ |
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| Afterwards, we played chase around the letters with me trying to catch him in a photo. |
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| That same afternoon, we took an afternoon stroll along the beach by our camp and encountered two kids by the pier. One, the girl pictured, was a French Canadian girl who didn't speak English. The other was a local boy. He's the one who thought of the great idea to bring a broken beach chair into the water to play on. Unfortunately, soon after, his father or grandfather showed up, furious that he had wandered down the beach all by himself!! |
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| Our one fully rainy day. We went on a bike ride, got completely soaked, and then played in all the puddles along the Malecón. All of the benches were painted – this one had the characters from the Jungle Book. |
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| Morning walk along the beach. He would comment on every boat, especially if it had two outboard motors instead of just one. He would run out to a pier by himself sometimes, so I made him wear his life jacket! |
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| Kadin is really into learning his letters right now – especially O, K, J, and S – and was practicing in the sand. I love that sometimes he calls me "Jota", which is the letter J in Spanish. |
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| Kadin met two twins, Sebastian and Tristan, at our campsite beach and LOVED playing with them for hours. We even hopped on their golf cart for a final ride before they got back onto their cruise ship and left. As they left, he cried and every time he saw a cruise ship he mentioned them. I realized it's kind of hard on him to meet kids for just a quick playday and then never see them again and it renewed my quest to find a more permanent community to go to every year. |
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| More cool discoveries… I think he's asking me what made all the holes in the sand. I believe it's little clams in there. |
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| Later on, we met up with a few more kids and they all started collecting these teensy clams. Kadin was proud to show the girl how many he'd found. |
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| Kadin checks out the cenote on our first day there. |
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| We jumped in with just an inner tube that day and enjoyed the fresh water for a change. |
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| The next day, we rented one of their kayaks and explored the mangrove edges of the cenote. We saw a 4' caimen basking in the sun, lots of birds, and Kadin helped me pick up lots of trash. |
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| Buenas noches! |
