A day in life: Cuban vacation

One of the most common posts I see on blogs today is "a day in the life". Now, granted most of the blogs I follow are either from mommy-bloggers or healthy living bloggers.. but honestly, some of these things are a yawn!

But here's a REAL yawn for ya... our daily schedule while we were in Cuba for vacation. And I don't mean yawn like boring, yawn like HOW RELAXING. It was glorious. Without further ado, a day in the life: Cuban vacation.

5:30am: My dad and his best friend, Brian, wake up to an alarm and walk to the beach together with all 10 towels in hand. They choose their favourite 10 lounge chairs in the sand and then go back to bed. (This was vital: if you waited even til 7am all of them would be gone... 2,000 people at one resort, what can ya do!)

Between 7-8:00am: Oliver and I wake up. Sometimes Dakota too. We get dressed, grab a room key, sippy cup and all-natural sanitizer, and kiss Daddy goodbye. Sometimes we go see if other early-risers in our party are up, other times we head out alone. We find a big table at the breakfast buffet and fill our plates. I get a mug of hot, black coffee (mmmm), the kids get water (or this weird lactose-free milk), the we choose our favourite things from the buffet which were typically a fresh-to-order omelet, sweet potato croquettes, bacon (if it was crispy enough for us), smokey chickpeas, fresh smoothies from just-juiced fruits, hashbrowns, chocolate pastries, sauteed green peppers and onions (for the eggs), whole grain toast with butter, and all sorts of cheese. Over time the rest of our group of 12 show up (heck sometimes they even beat us) and then we all leisurely eat and enjoy each other's company/ discuss who has a hang over (just kidding, only ONE hang over was had all trip!)

We leave the restaurant and watch whatever entertainment is out that day -- Disney characters, live bands, all-male acapella singing groups, still statues that come to life to scare people, etc.

We all go to our own rooms and change into bathing suits, put on sunscreen, grab sunglasses, sand toys, etc. and meet at the beach.

9:30am - 1:00pm: We do not leave the beach. Most of us swim the entire time. We'll take a break to rent a kayak or have staff take us out on the hobi-cat boat for half an hour. We'll snorkel and watch schools of fish, or even find a star fish and become beach celebrities. We'll "tan"... under a cabana because the sun is too hot. We'll venture over to the bar for a pina colada or white russian. At exactly 10am Dakota will fall asleep on someone's lap. Around 10:30 or 11am other groups will start heading to the volleyball area and some of us (not me!) will engage in a few heated games. Ollie collects sea shells and meets new friends by saying "Hey I'm Ollie from London Can I Play With You" all one word. People will ohh-and-ahh at Dakota. We'll remember that swim diapers don't really keep the pee in. We'll rinse off in the ocean water. And then we'll find out if there's a pig roast on today.

1:00pm: If there's a pig roast on we'll head over and load up on delicious pork and black-bean-rice. If not, we'll find a large table at the ocean-side restaurant and fill up at their buffet. My favourite items were pasta with bechemel sauce (to share with the kids), roasted eggplant, stuffed peppers, battered fish (oh my life, I'll never forget how yummy!), paella with oysters, and a big scoop of coconut ice cream to finish.

Everyone under 30 heads over to the pool and camps out for the afternoon. Calvin rinses the sand off Dakota and then brings her up to our room for her afternoon nap. He chills in there the whole time to give himself much needed out-of-the-heat time. Sarah and I laugh at people making fools of themselves at the swim up bar. I attempt to drink a hot coffee from a small, flimsy plastic cup.

4:30pm: We realize it's probably time to get out of our bathing suits. We round up the crew and make sure everyone knows where to meet for dinner. If it's a night we have a reservation we try to dress fancier, if we're just eating at the dinner buffet we don't. We hang out bathing suits out to try. We shower or soak in the jacuzzi tub.

6:00pm: We eat dinner, often in 3-5 courses. At dinner we discuss our evening plans. Activities ranged from tennis to rock concerts to sun-set beach time to movie night. Unless we all want to do the same thing (i.e. Michael Jackson concert), one group will volunteer to stay in the room from 8:30pm on so the kids can sleep.

8:30pm: We get the kids into pj's, brush teeth, kissed heads. Dakota goes in her crib in a separate room. Oliver gets the movie "Big Hero 6" on his laptop in his cot bed beside ours. He crashes within 5 minutes, because he's had a busy day. If it's a stay-in night, we fire up a movie like Interstellar. If we're going out we might go dancing or have drinks at the lobby bar. I never fall asleep after 10pm.

And then we start again!

Life Lesson: Don't stress a guess

Yesterday I learned a great life lesson and I thought I'd share.

I don't usually text and drive. No, I never text and drive. I'm that person that aggressively tells the driver to drop their phone if they pick it up and begin reading. Very, very anti-drive-texting. But for some reason when I heard my phone buzz beside me on the passenger seat I really thought I should read it.

I was driving home from work (45 minutes from St. Thomas to North London) and it's not uncommon for Cal to write something like "Hey pick up diapers on the way home" or "We're out of honey" or "The kids and I are still at my parents' house, meet us here instead". So when I came to a stop at a red light that I know always takes forever I quickly scanned what it said.

"You're so not gunna want to come home." From Calvin Harrison.

What kind of a text is that?! 

Instantly my heart was racing and my mind was going a mile a minute. I'm so not gunna want to come home? To my own house and my own family, after having been gone for work since 6:45am? What possible reason could there be?

Unfortunately, due to my stance on drive-texting, I didn't choose to engage in a conversation. I put the phone down, looked back up at the red light and let myself drift into a state of utter panic.

My first ten thoughts (and I assure you, there were thousands) were as follows:

1. I've done something really terrible and he's telling me an argument is coming.

2. One of our children is hurt and when I find out I'm going to be heartbroken.

3. He has been in a car accident and either the car is really destroyed, or he is.

4. There's been a fire.

5. Oliver has some how injured Dakota and he doesn't know what to do about it.

6. He's forgotten to pick up groceries and we have to eat popcorn and green tea for dinner.

7. Another flat tire.

8. Our builder has tried to pave our drive way and something got really messed up.

9. We got mail that delivered really bad news like a huge hike in prices of some sort.

10. Job loss.

No matter how much I rationalized, all that could get me home in one piece was deep breathing. I literally braced myself for what horror would meet me at home. As I parked the car in the drive way I scanned our other car for issues (none) and even checked the house for fire damage. I quickly pulled up my Facebook messages to see if there were any clues there. Nothing. 

Then suddenly I remembered something I'd said to Cal earlier in the week.

He had been sitting watching TV and noticed a huge line across the screen.

"Oh my gosh, Oliver must have scratched the tv screen. This SUCKS." He said, and he started brainstorming how he could fix or replace the tv. Just like mine, his brain was racing. He was visibly stressed out. 

I calmly asked, "Did you check if it's actually a scratch, or is that just your best guess?"

"Well, I didn't actually..." He started.

"Don't stress a guess." I told him.

Within a few seconds I'd grabbed some screen cleaner and a cloth and started wiping the tv down. Luckily, the big mark was just dark crayon (Life tip: If you ever want to fake a tv scratch, dark crayon looks PERFECT.). It came off clean and Cal was relieved.

It just doesn't make sense to waste your time, effort, energy, emotions, hormones, on something that isn't even confirmed. He didn't even know if it was truly a scratch and already he was allowing himself to feel the panic as though it surely was.

And I walked into the house, that day, unsure what his text could have meant, but remembering that all of the possibilities that were freaking me out were just GUESSES. That's all they were. And I couldn't stress a guess.

I unlocked the door, dropped my coat and bag, and slipped my shoes off. Looking down the hall I called out to Cal: "Why am I not gunna want to come home?" 

What had I done wrong? What had gone wrong? Who was hurt? What would cost us money?

He appeared around the corner and laughed,

"Oh remember all that laundry you folded? Oliver totally messed some of it up. I thought that would tick you off. Ha ha."

Imagine that, I'd spent 25 minutes of my drive deep breathing myself out of an anxiety attack over 4 shirts that I'd need to refold....

Don't stress a guess!

13 months // 43 month update

You know what the hardest thing is about these updates? Knowing what I've already written about in the last one! I'd really hate to have like 20 of these in a row that say: So, Oliver is super into making inventions right now..

I'll do my best.

As I probably mentioned in the last update, we held a birthday party for Dakota. For her birthday we bought her some new clothes, a bike helmet so that we can go for bike rides (Ollie won't likely fit in my front baby seat this summer, plus he has his own bike to ride) and a new kid-sized couch. The couch has been amazing for movie nights... it unfolds into a bed which fits both kids side by side, so we can put on a Disney move and cuddle them up together. They love it.

One day while my mom was watching the kids, Dakota had a dirty diaper that went pretty rogue. Like, she destroyed every item of her outfit. My mom stripped her down, threw the clothes in the wash, gave her a bath and then did what any sensible grandma would do: she found an old outfit of Oliver's that she used to keep as a backup and put Dakota in it. So here she is in some clothes meant for a 2 year old boy.

Dakota was so precious at church last weekend, she kept singing along and raising her hands. I had to snap a sneaky photo of it!

Oliver is working through a list of "Kindergarden readiness" items that I collected. Before September I'd like him to be able to write his name, recognize his name written out by someone else and be able to spell it outloud. I'd like him to be able to write, recognize and list more letters and numbers. I'd like him to be able to fully get dressed without asking for help, and we need to buy him some velco-closed shoes since all of his are shoelaced. I'd like him to be able to use the bathroom totally unassisted (he can for "pees" but...) and open packages, like granola bars, by himself. I'd like him to feel more comfortable sharing, and listening to instructions, and being okay with it when plans change from what he was expecting. And other things like cutting in a straight line, tracing dotted lines in different patterns, counting objects in front of him, and sorting patterns. Some of this he's already really good at... like this activity we did about sorting jelly bean colours. I wasn't sure if he'd get it right away but lo and behold...

 "What, Mommy? This 'posa be hard?"  You can also see the fishing game we worked on, which was a series of x's and o's with paperclips that he would fish up with a magnet on a string. O's are points and X's are GAME OVER. Every point gets a jelly bean. That's how he earned them, then I made him sort them.


Oliver has been doing incredible in his skating/hockey class. At his age they only offer Parent and Tot lessons, so I (or Cal, or a grandpa) need to be on the ice with him, but he's totally independent and can skate on his own... now. That wasn't the case at first.

We are considering putting him in Timbits next year. Or doing another year of skating lessons. There's a floor hockey program that runs through spring but unfortunately Cal and I are both reluctant to commit to it since it's every Saturday and we both rotate weekends at work.

And lastly, here is our family motto for the month: