Day 6 - "I wanna da ocean."

I woke up to Mateo's smiling face this morning saying "I wanna da ocean." We were happy to oblige! After a breakfast of watermelon and cereal, we walked down to the beach.

The little boy who talked about the ocean all morning wasn't too confident when he saw the waves roll onto the sand. So we thought we'd show him seashells first to warm him up. BIG mistake. Apparently he is terrified of seashells! Who ever heard of such a thing? When we picked one up to show him they were pretty, the tears began. Yikes. So we returned our focus to the ocean again.

As we walked closer to the water Mateo stopped short and said, "It's kinda yucky." But with Mommy's coaxing he soon let the water rise up to meet his feet. This he loved, thank goodness. As we tried to keep our balance while our feet sunk into the sand each time the water receded, Mateo said it was like "a skateboard." Such a smart one, he is.

The now very brave Mateo said, "Deeper!" So deeper we went. He licked his lips and tasted the salty water. He made a funny face (I braced for the worst), and he said "It's kinda yummy!" Ha! His little floaty vest/suit was perfect for the occasion. A BIG thanks to our friend Miles for letting us borrow it.

After we tired of the ocean, we headed to the pool again. Later we dried off for a lunch that finished with ice cream and cookies. This is our view from our lunching spot.

Back in our room we had some down time. Mat quite enjoyed the telephone. "The phone is ringing! Hello? Where are you? Okay. Bye." Hmm... Perhaps someone has been listening to me talk to Rafi at dinner time? Rafi and I laid down to "fake nap" hoping it would entice him to lay down, but we both fell asleep and ended up having a real nap. Oops! Eventually Mat must have laid down next to me, as he was completely out when I woke up - THREE hours later. Guess we were more tired than we thought.

And off we went to swim again! It's becoming evident that Mateo is starting to really use his imagination. He was pretending his hands were fish, dolphins, octopus, jelly fish, and starfish. (He may have learned to do this at school, for his class name is the "Starfish Class.") Rafi pretended to be a whale and practiced Hook 'Em signs with him in the pool as I sunned myself. I know it's bad, but it feels so good!

Later as we walked to dinner Rafi noticed this. Do you see it? A little hand print sunburned into my skin. I'm guessing it was from when we were in the ocean. Guess I didn't do a good job with the sunscreen.

Mateo said these were not in fact crocodiles but spiders on the wall of the restaurant.

Dinner was DIVINE! So good we had to take photos. My dish, top left, was a blue cheese fettuccini with the tenderest of beef medallions. At the top right is Mateo's plate of tandoori baked chicken on a bed of mashed potatoes and eggplant. Rafi's dish was the fish of the day (he didn't know what it was) with steamed vegetables in a sweet glaze. I don't claim to be a big lover of seafood, but even I thought his fish was really good.

Mateo, of course, just ate bread. Sigh... And because he just ate bread, he ended up with a Cheeto lips later on. This is our submission for a parents of the year award for 2009.

We tried to watch the UT basketball game in our room, but it wasn't on ESPN here. So we went down to watch the kids' show already in progress.

At nine o'clock we put Mateo to bed, and we had a repeat of the night previous - margarita and diet Coke on the balcony with iPhone games. We really regretting having not brought a deck of cards, but the game "Unblock Me" became good fodder for competition. And that was the end of day 6!