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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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| On the ferry crossing from Cancun to Isla Mujeres |
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| At our hotel, there was a perfect little pool with a long strip of shallow water where Kadito could run, swim, and play without me holding onto him. See video below for the live action version – "Mama, watch this!" |
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| Arrrgh! Inside a shark's mouth on one of the piers. We were having a blast, pretending to be scared, and just as I was about to take the photo, of course, he covers his eyes… ¡No fotos! |
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| The hotel had a (somewhat sad) little tank of slider turtles and Kadin loved watching them. One waiter let us pick up the littlest one but the next day another waiter said we couldn't because one of them bit a kid once. They aren't mean turtles so I suspect the kid wasn't handling him properly, but oh well, no more picking them up. I love Dito's wispy hair, necklace, and bare foot in this photo. |
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| We had a day of rain on the Island and so Kadito and I went to the bar to play some pool. We must have spent over an hour there. He loved hitting them, of course, but he also loved listening to them go down the tubes and running the tray to pull them out again. |
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| At the beach… popcorn was our favorite snack. Kadin would walk up and down the beach looking for the popcorn vendors. I love that in Spanish, popcorn is "palomitas" which means "little doves". |
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| The waves weren't very big on Isla Mujeres, but big enough to still have fun! I left Kadin's blue life jacket at a bus station by mistake and found this inflatable one at a mega store in Cancun. |
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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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| On the bus to Playa del Carmen, Kadin wanted to play with my hair ties and asked me to put them in his hair. Too cute!!! Unfortunately, he says, "Mi niña!" now, and I had to tell him that boys can wear ponytails too but if he wants to pretend he is a girl, that's ok too! |
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| We stayed in a really nasty hostel only one night, but it's advantage was that it was right next to this plaza (Parque Los Fundadores), where lots of exciting things were happening. The beach was right here as well, but we didn't hang out on the beach that much in this town. |
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| Our first night in Playa, we watched the Mayan Dancers. They were super colorful and fun. You could ask to have your picture taken with them but Kadito was a bit leary of some of the dancers who were dressed up as animals and a skeleton. |
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| Kadito liked the dancers but he LOVED the Voladores de Papantla (Flyers from Papantla). He heard the drums going indicating it was about to start and took off running to see them fly. |
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| It's a blurry photo, but this is how Kadin watched the flyers, riveted in his seat, fascinated. I asked if he wanted to do it and he said, "Mi hombre, me do it." (When I'm a man, I'll do it) |
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| I finally convinced Kadin to leave the Flyers and go out for dinner. Here he is with a mouth full of pizza, watching the musicians play in the restaurant. "Too loud!", he said. My little monkey. |
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| Another blurry photo, but too adorable to leave out and I wanted to include a photo of him wearing his surfer-boy necklace made out of a cut shell embedded with crushed blue stones. |
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| The next morning, we left the nasty hostel and walked for about an hour to our new place, a sweet little condo I found on Air B&B. It was already pretty hot so we got some ice cream… and even with ice cream in his hand, the little punk wouldn't smile for the camera. He was happy, I swear! |
