Does anyone make baby books anymore? Probably.
And I probably should. But with everything digital these days and how much we move around between countries, having something as precious as a baby book might be hard to keep track of. This is something i’ve been meaning to do for 2 years, so the sooner I start the better – A little snapshot recorded in text and photos that we can look back on, to that time when Luna was just 3. Continue reading Luna is 3
Just an easy relaxing walk on a bridge right? Not so much. What this photo doesn’t show is how relieved we were to finally find this bridge!
See video for the visuals, but here’s the story:
They aren’t really babies anymore, but my almost 3 year old and almost 1 year old love camping. My husband and I had been a little apprehensive about camping with little ones just because we’d never done it before. We invested in a nice 6 man tent, and figured sleeping all together on the ground wouldn’t be that different from sleeping all together in a bed! Turns out we were right! Continue reading Camping with Babies
If you’re looking for a toddler friendly activity to provide hours of entertainment, here’s a great one!
Piñatas are huge here in Nicaragua. Every major holiday event seems to involve a swarm of kids swatting a hard stick at each other’s heads as they dive in the dirt for candy. Luna is still intimidated by the crazy scene and I’m not thrilled about the bags of disgusting candy we end up with afterwards. But piñatas are too fun to give up for those reasons alone.
Our family lives primarily in Northern Nicaragua, but we do spend several months per year in Costa Rica. We love our little house in the jungle, watching monkeys from the porch, walking across the street to check the surf, playing with the kids in the river, and catching waves ourselves.
I pulled out the GoPro on the last couple of days of our trip to capture a few scenes summarizing our life in paradise. Kid play, a lot of checking the surf, and even a bit of surfing.
Luna has been going in cycles of wanting to surf with me every day for a couple of weeks, and then showing no interest at all. I don’t push it. If I say, “want to surf with mama?” and she says “not today,” then it’s not today.
But on this day, I asked her if she wanted to surf and she said “YES!” I passed off Soleo who was not thrilled at hanging on the beach with the nanny right at that moment, but when Luna wants to surf she gets to go surfing!
The waves were nice and small with a big channel. We paddled out and relaxed on the outside for a while. We talked about the channel, the peak, the inside, the outside. She pointed out whitewash and green waves. We played on the board, jumping off and swimming back to it. We looked for turtles, pulled up small pieces of driftwood for inspection, sang songs from Disney’s Moana.
Eventually a set swung wide and we were in the perfect spot, so while still singing a song, I turned to paddle. She held on tight, looking around as I did some gentle turns, was smiling and happy, and even gave me a mid-wave high 5. Then we paddled out for another. It was probably my favorite wave ever. 
After this wave, she was talking about surfing non-stop for the rest of the day and even practicing popups on my hand plane.
Luna has ridden a bunch of waves in her life starting at age 10 months, but this was the first time she wanted to paddle outside with me.
We had been spending a lot of time on the inside, playing around, riding broken waves with her on my back.
One day the waves were pretty small and I saw that there were long enough gaps between sets that I could probably get her outside without having to pop over a big wave. I asked if she wanted to “go out to the amigas” and she said “ok!”
We timed it just right and made it outside with dry hair. She was a little nervous but also happy to be out there.
I saw a little wave coming, turned and paddled for it. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to catch it or what I’d do when we did catch it. Should I just stay laying down as we’d been practicing? But once we were in it, instinct kicked in and I slowly stood up. She was gripping tightly, and I reached around and got an arm on her just in case.
We rode it all the way in! I asked if she wanted to paddle out for another and she said yes. On the next paddle out, I didn’t time it quite as well and we did have to push through a little wave. She got splashed in the face and wasn’t too happy about it, but calmed down once we got outside. The swell was small but long period and building. After having to paddle quickly to avoid a couple of larger waves, I decided not to push our luck and we paddled in.
I’m looking forward to the next opportunity to get her out there again!
A couple of months ago I gave birth to a big healthy baby boy (over 9 lbs). He is my second baby in two years and the recovery process was a lot slower than my first. I didn’t surf as long into my pregnancy the second time (30 weeks vs. 32 weeks) and I waited a bit longer to get back in the water after having my son than my daughter (7 weeks vs. 5). Those two weeks on either end may not seem like much, but they did to me.
When I finally got back in the water after 4 months off the board, I was slow, weak, and out of rhythm with the ocean. These clips were taken in my first two weeks back in the water.
Luckily my son is a very mellow baby who is happy to chill out on the beach while mama goes surfing. My daughter is 2 and loves the ocean and has started asking to catch waves with me. Here’s a snapshot of our surfing life from the past week.
Salt Water Mama 