We went to Cuba, part four

The food was terrible but THE BEACH WAS AMAZING. If I had any advice, it would be to bring something pink to wear or to put your kids in, because of how incredible it looks against the blue. Whether you are shell-hunting.

Or charging into the surf.

Or learning how to brace yourself against it.

It also makes you easy to spot when you are like GONNA CHASE SOME SEAGULLS BYEEEEE.

Most days, the beach was super windy and the waves were EXCITING, but there was one day where it was calm enough to walk way out to the sandbar. Hi guys! Hiiiiiiiiii!

Mom made the girls a blanket fort on the beach, mostly to help Geneva feel safe because even just being where the ocean could look at her was terrifying.

Geneva fell, like, five times a day, and scraped up her knees and then scraped up the scrapes and then she was twirling in the hallway and just twirled into a corner and bruised up her pretty forehead. DID SHE MIND goodness no.

Another family had some of those squirter thingies, and Eleanor used one to fill a bucket while Geneva just dipped hers in the water and then waved it around in the air, saying 'Swerrrrt!'

This is also how she squirted you with a water gun. You ain't swerting nobody, Geneva.

Mom and dad left, everyone was very sad, Eleanor was all, Now I won't have any fun and I was like, Eh, I think ya will.

Playing with a four-year-old in the ocean is fantastic, because they just want to fill a bucket full of water and then dump some sand into it and then stir it around, 'It's turtle soup!' and then dump it out again, and make little piles of 'food' by the tideline so the waves come up and eat it, or maybe they don't! Maybe the waves don't like sand-burgers! Also they are pretty into being mermaids.

I could have played with Eleanor in the ocean for DAYS but Geneva wouldn't let me. BE COOL, GENEVA. (No, it's fine. One day she'll be so cool she won't WANT to sit in my lap for hours at a time, and I will be sad about it because she still smells amazing and her solid little body is very satisfying to hold.)

Anyway. After mom and dad left, we made better friends with the kids with the squirty thingies, and Eleanor and the older girl spent HALF HOURS rinsing and drying and organizing their collection of shells.

Geneva kept luring the younger brother (he was like four) onto the bridge, she'd hunker down so she could peer up under his hat and she'd be like, Bidge? Biiiiiiiidge? Bidge. Bidge? And eventually Joel would take them both to the bridge and I'd lie back in my lounge chair and sun myself.

Geneva was, it has perhaps become clear, pretty needy on this trip. SO MANY NEW STUFFS, new bed, new food, scary water that moves, etc, so she would lug Snuggles around everywhere and once in a while, she'd nip out the door on the way to supper or wherever with him and we'd be all the way out of the building and I'd be like, HEY.

Which is how Snuggles found himself at the beach one day.

Geneva never really got the appeal of the waves, and here she is waving at the waves because she doesn't really understand homophones, either.

And then we flew home, and it was long and we got in at almost 1am and now we're home. Good trip, everyone!

We went to Cuba, part three.

One day, for a change, we went into town.

The girls had been eating, like, nothing because the food was so terrible. IT WAS SO TERRIBLE. And I say this as a grown-ass woman who will eat all kinds of things and whose kids will eat a lot of stuff. It wasn't just, like, Oh this food is unfamiliar to me and so I shall not eat it. It was like, This squash is mushy and cold, and these potatoes taste like the ones from the box, and this rice is SO SALTY and this meat is basically gristle and these beans aren't cooked through and are still hard.

I had been prepared to relax my standards a little, because we were on vacation, but by a few days in I was like, Who wants buttered toast for lunch! Have one of these heinous yogurt-adjacent sugar bombs for breakfast, I don't even care. Eleanor and I lived off of desserts, Geneva ate salty rice and deli ham, and then the one day we discovered the poolside cafeteria, that day we had A PILE OF FRIES for lunch that I had to wait in line for like TWENTY MINUTES for and it was amazing.

Anyway. We went into town. Well, 'town.' We went into a collection of market stalls and restaurants and this tall tower, that my parents took the girls up.

They had a little park!

A guy made me a little grasshopper out of leaves!

And then we went for lunch to this pizza place and had PIZZA and it was EVERYTHING and Eleanor ate FIVE PIECES because she was so, so starved.

And the guy said they had the best mojitos in town, and I don't know if he was right but he MAY HAVE BEEN because they were incredible. And then we took our full bellies and we went home.

We went to Cuba, part two.

Every morning, we'd go to breakfast.

We do some coloring while we finish our coffee.

And then maybe we go to the pool?

When you have small children, you are up the earliest, and the least lingery-over-coffee, so you are out and about first and the pool is your oyster.

We get bored of the big pool, maybe we go to the little pool.

It has a spitting dolphin. Hilarious! There is also a rickety swing!

Maybe we drink a coconut?

You get cold, you have a cuddle.

Geneva is not really a pool-goer-inner. She's more of a sitter-besider.

A bucket-filler.

A lounge-chair-lounger.

What are you doing, Geneva? Having a talk with the plants? Ok.

And then after naps, maybe we go to the beach?

So windy!

Build some sandcastles.

Stomp some sandcastles.

Bury some feets and draw some little birdie feets over them.

Geneva is for SURE not an ocean-goer-inner. She is an ocean-runner-away-frommer.

Mayyyybe a seaweed collector. If accompanied.

In betweentimes, we sit and have a little read.

Or we go to Papa and Gigi's room and rummage through their drawer of toys, read their giant books.

In the evening, probably we go back to the pool, and we stay until we are much too cold and have to go to supper.

Every day so samey, but this is why we come.

We went to Cuba, part one.

We went to Cuba! We had the perfect travel day!

Our flight left at like 9:30 am! Eleanor's main interests are, like, reading and coloring and stickering, so you just load her backpack up with things and you don't have to worry about her for the rest of the flight. Geneva, on the other hand, is a busy little body and still a lap infant for all intents and traveling purposes even though omg she is so large, but she was HAPPY the whole flight and all you can really ask is that your kids aren't one of the ones that are crying. So.


And then we took a 1.5 hour bus ride.

But everyone slept! Because it was nap time! You see? Perfect travel day.

And we got off the bus into the waiting arms of my parents and traveling towards my parents is always, like, you know you're gonna be ok and all you have to do is just get there.

So we got there, and our room was sufficiently commodious, our bed sufficiently bouncy.

And Eleanor had been having a lot of trepidation about 'the sea creatures,' even though I explained over and over that the whales and sharks lived way out deep, deeper than we could ever get, so after my parents took the kids to scope out the pool, and Joel and I UNPACKED OUR STUFF (I have never in my child-having life had the luxury of unpacking into a hotel room), we walked down to see the beach before the sun set. As we rounded the corner, Eleanor let out a gasp and said, I will, I will swim in that ocean!

And so she did.