• place holder posts,  travel

    Home!

    ...missing Hawaii already

    Phew! We’re home!

    Posts to come soon:

    1. SAJ visits a coffee plantation!
    2. Everything you ever wanted to know about volcanos and weather
    3. A day when the rainy side of the island was not rainy
    4. What works and doesn’t work while traveling on a plane with a toddler
    5. Toby’s birthday that came and went uncelebrated

    I will get to these as soon as I sort through this mountain of mail that is cascading onto my laptop and pay some bills that are threatening to ding my credit because I was on vacation and didn’t do any paperwork for eight days. But I will put you before I do the truckload of laundry that is over-flowing out of our hamper and before I clean out the refrigerator of a few moldy science experiments. Aren’t you special?

  • Bug,  travel

    Hawaii Day Five: Green Curry and “Swimming”

    green curry.....

    This might be kind of sad and pathetic to admit but you know what the highlight of day five was for me? Finding a Thai restaurant and ordering some green curry. Sure, I know we have Thai restaurants all over Orange County and I could probably even find some green curry within walking distance of my house… BUT when we are at home I usually cook and we don’t order take-out much. Also, Toby does not like curry. So that means I don’t have it much.

    I LOVE green curry. I know it isn’t the prettiest dish to look at but it is yummy! Basil, bamboo sprouts, slightly spicy curry mixed with sweet coconut milk. Mmmmm! I could probably do without the cabbage but it doesn’t really harm the dish. I probably need the fiber anyway.

    chicken satay deconstructed (by Baby Bug)

    Baby Bug had chicken satay and even ate it! I was surprised since peanuts are sort of iffy since she went her whole first year without eating them. Getting her to eat anything while on vacation has been challenging. I think she’s been existing on goldfish crackers and Nemo gummy treats alone. She must get her energy out of the air or something.

    Thai iced tea

    Of course I had a Thai iced tea. That’s sort of a prerequisite. I was very happy indeed… until Baby Bug decided to dump my ice water down her front. Sometimes because I want to eat and not listen to the endless stream of “I want…I want…I want…” I let her do things like play with the ice cubes in my drinking water. Thankfully, we were dining outside and the dress code here is very casual so I stripped off her overalls and let her finish the rest of her dinner in her diaper.

    THEN she decided she wanted to go potty and take her diaper off. This is a fun game we play at home as we run to the baby-potty but in a restaurant before I’ve paid the check, it’s a whole other story. Not to mention I didn’t even know where the restroom was. Somehow we made it through that little adventure and I’m just glad to say that the owners of the little Thai restaurant are very kind and understanding. I left them a big tip.

    retaining wall park

    My next highlight of the day would be following Baby Bug around. She definitely has her own ideas about what we should do and where we should go. Most of her plans involve finding the sand or the water. Or both.

    going her own way

    tide pool

    Some of her “tours” have lead us to some pretty amazing spots.

    toes

    Some of them have lead us to precarious places where I had to extract her screaming and kicking because I was afraid a crab or a sharp shell might hurt her.

    some ting ober dere!

    Baby Bug’s favorite place to be has got to be the pool. I think she could hang out there all day long. Which would be fine with me except I am so afraid of her dunking herself that I have to hover over her like a hawk. This means I’m getting my daily work-out because she likes to go from the kiddie pool to the big people pool and back again, over and over and over. Phew! It’s tiring!

    smiley pool girl

    Sometimes she’ll take a side trip through the open air bar right next to the pool which tempts me to order a mai tai while I’m cruising through. But I don’t because I’m supposed to be watching Baby Bug like a hawk and I need my wits about me.

    You’d think that the bar patrons might be annoyed that a wet baby keeps running past them over and over but so far most of people I’ve come across here have been super nice. I think the warm temperatures and the endless ocean on the horizon just mellows everyone out.

    "swimming"

    So yeah. We’ve been spending a lot of time at the pool “swimming”. Which is technically not really swimming but standing on the step talking about swimming or me running after Baby Bug telling her not to run and talking about swimming at the same time. Good times, I tell you. If it wasn’t for the warm temperature and the endless ocean, I think I might have lost my mind by now.