Day 2: Madeleine explores, Julia lets loose

Madeleine has been very intrigued by her new surroundings on this trip, and she has been working hard on her new tricks as she explores her environment. When we got into our hotel several hours past the kids' bedtime on Wednesday, I put Madeleine into her pack n play (which was provided by the hotel, so it was a different make/model than the one we have, therefore veeery interesting and exciting) and instead of falling right asleep like we had hoped, she kept repeatedly sitting up and crawling around all over the pack n play with her Sleep Sack on. I think I put her down on her back about 8 different times, and within a few minutes, I would glance over and see her crawling around again, a look of very focused interest on her face. But perhaps of even more interest to her are the tall chairs that are seated at the breakfast bar in our kitchenette. I had placed her down on the floor with a few toys yesterday while I was trying to make myself a quick lunch, and when I looked over to check on her, this is what I saw:



She not only pulled up to standing, but she was just hanging out with only one hand for balance as if it was a total piece of cake to be standing there. I guess that only satisfied her need to explore for a few minutes, however, because the next time I took a peek at her she had actually crawled underneath the chair and stood up under the seat, happy as a clam to be in her little hide-out:


Aside from the excitement of the chair, we got to do a lot of fun things yesterday, and Julia seems to be in total paradise on this trip. I took her to the hotel pool yesterday while Madeleine napped, and although she was completely, irrationally terrified by the gardener running his hose to water the plants, she had a great time playing "hot water, cold water," a game which consisted of her sitting at the base of the hot tub and kicking her feet in the water, then getting up to walk over to the steps of the pool to do the same thing, then back to the hot tub, etc. Since she's only 3, can't swim, and kind of klutzy and living in la-la land a lot of the time, I of course didn't feel comfortable letting her prance around between the two water areas by herself, so I also got to play hot water, cold water, as much as I would have loved to just stay put in the hot tub for a little while!

After Madeleine woke up, we went to Mozart's Coffee house to meet an old friend of mine, Ginny, who now lives in Austin. Julia got the special treat of having a super-duper sized cupcake for snack there, and we sat out by the lake with our coffees, snacks, etc. Julia spent the first half of the visit too shy to even look at Ginny, though she started coming out of her shell and galloping around the deck, and before long was completely obsessed with Ginny and wouldn't let the adults get a word in edge-wise. "Um, you know what? We don't have Snow White or Tinkerbell, but we only have Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Little Mermaid..." "Do you know what? Madeleine had to get shots and she ATE her green band-aid!" "Um, do you know that yesterday (this past winter) we had dinner at Nate's house and he said 'I'm gonna climb up a tree and swing from its branches?" And so on. She even gave Ginny a repeat performance of "Schoolbuses" and a bunch of the other coffee-drinkers on the deck apparently got a kick out of it.


The Rowes at Mozarts.

In the evening, we went to the hotel social hour, which not only had complimentary drinks and hors d'oeuvres, but also a live band playing out by the pool. It seems that Julia is a country music fan, because she had a total blast dancing to the music, to the point where the band members themselves commented that they liked her dancing in between songs.

Ethan and the girls at social hour


Julia and Ethan twirling around to the live music


More to come!