Nick got picked up at 7:45 this morning for his daylong scuba diving trip, so Millie and I had a girls’ day. We had breakfast together at the hotel buffet and I she had Nutella on toast for the first time. I’m sure I’ll regret this one for the next few weeks when she requests it every morning. Getting her to eat healthy while not demonizing “bad” foods feels impossible.

We hung out outside a bit but she wanted to go back to the room to play. We didn’t have anything on our agenda so I did my best to just follow her lead. We played in the hotel room for a few hours. We set up an ice cream shop and then a school with her little people.

It’s been funny to see how trip experiences make their way into her play. She loves playing museum where she works the front desk and gives me directions for where to go. She has also started getting really into drawing maps and giving directions.

I thought this was clever, it’s how she visually represented that something will take 1.5 hours: the number 1 and a half filled in circle.

At about noon I couldn’t take doing voices for plastic people any more and I persuaded her to walk on the beach with me towards Nick’s diving shop. She begrudgingly went.

The tides here are very extreme and it was low tide, so people were walking way out on the sand banks. Millie had some freak outs about not wanting to step on a sea urchin.

We walked about 20 minutes in the beautiful aqua water and then took a break at a cafe for lunch. She had a banana juice. Basically a watered down banana smoothie, delicious.

We took our time and continued walking. The beach is busy with “beach boys” who are trying to sell tourists bracelets or wooden giraffes or boat rides. It got exhausting answering the same small talk questions over and over and then saying “no thank you”. Millie said “ugh these guys are the worst!” I tried explaining that this is their job and they are trying to make money, while deep down agreeing with her.

We made it to the dive shop at about 3 right as Nick was returning. He said it was good but choppy. He wore his Apple Watch which is now seemingly dead. Of course I just wanted to know the gossip about all the other people that were on his boat, like my own personal episode of White Lotus. 2 women got seasick and puked, he befriended a Lebanese guy from Dubai, and there was a fit Coloradan family of 4 who had just climbed Kilimanjaro.

Millie and I swam a bit and then we went back to the same place we had dinner last night. The vibes were just too good. Millie built multiple sandcastles and we had an early dinner. We watched the sun set.

We had the same taxi driver home. We bonded with him last night and again tonight. We got his number so he can take us to our new location tomorrow.

And then everyone but me was asleep by 8:15. The good/bad thing about being in a hotel instead of an Airbnb: we’re all on a 4-year-old’s schedule.