January 19-21, 2018 - Mahahual, Mexico (3 years 6 months)

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?)

View of our cozy home, after I had a chance to clean it up a bit while Kadito was napping.

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.

Ay, que rico! 

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!

January 17-18, 2018 - Mahahual, Mexico (3 years 6 months)

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. 

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.

On a side note, with no picture to document it, Kadito found an open bag of Flamin Hot Cheetos on the beach with a few Cheetos still in it and he started to eat them before I could say anything (either about it being "trash" or it being spicy!).  So, I let him eat them, figuring they'd be way too spicy for him, and he LOVED them.  Must have been the MSG.  

Oh, and here's the ingredient list so you see why I don't normally give him these things:  

Enriched Corn Meal (Corn Meal, Ferrous Sulfate, Niacin, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, and Folic Acid), Vegetable Oil (Contains One or More of the Following: Corn, Soybean or Sunflower Oil), flamin hot seasoning (Maltodextrin, salt, Sugar, Monosodium Glutamate, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Citric Acid, Artificial Color (Including Red 40 Lake, Yellow 6 Lake, Yellow 6, Yellow 5), Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed Oil, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Cheddar Cheese (Cultured Milk, Salt, Enzymes), Whey, Onion Powder, Whey Protein Concentrate, Corn Syrup Solids, Natural Flavor, Buttermilk, Garlic Powder, Disodium Phosphate, Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Caseinate, Lactic acid, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, nonfat milk, Sodium Citrate, Carrageenan) , salt.

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. ❤️

Afterwards, we played chase around the letters with me trying to catch him in a photo.

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!!

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.

January 16, 2018 - Mahahual, Mexico (3 years 6 months)

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Video:  Kadin playing in the water.  "Mi mano bote" = my hand is a boat!  "Big bote bajo aqua" = it's a big boat going under water!

January 14-15, 2018 - Mahahual, Mexico (3 years 6 months)

Look Mama, you can't see my thumb!

Listening to the ocean waves…

Mahahual's beaches were mostly calm with lots of sea grasses and shells and other treasures for my budding naturalist.  

Showing me his treasure – a barnacle and sea grass covered shell of some sort.

Of course, if there is a puppy around, Kadin wants to be his best friend.  This cutie was about 9 months old and named Luna.

Yum! Octopus!  He loved it and mostly liked to eat off the suction cups.  Whenever we'd go to another restaurant, he'd say, "Me want eat pupu!"  Of course, pupu is pulpo, Spanish for octopus, but it made a few people turn their heads. ;-)

Same meal.  Kadin decides to paint his fingernails… with ketchup.  He was very proud of it and was happy to let me take his photo.

My little funny face, I love you so much.

Here's our campsite at Mahahual.  Definitely my favorite.  Right on the beach and not too crowded and there was even a bar and restaurant right there.