el niño effect

Fortunately for us there was a bike AND another 3 year old at this restaurant

It´s been several weeks now and things have started to smooth out.  Eating out for the first couple of weeks was nightmarish; one parent quickly ate while the other chased after the boys.  Neither of them could sit still and eat with all the distractions of open air restaurants.  Three house rentals later with an opportunity to sort out dinner routines and finally eating out is much better.  Upon arrival at a restaurant we don´t sit down, we just let the boys run around and play until the food arrives.  Twice we have found restaurants with playgrounds in the yard and sometimes there are even toys to play with.  We strap Shane in his cloth seat or tie him in with the Ergo belt and put his plate on his chair if there is no high chair.  We still eat faster than most people but we all eat together!  Takeout is key - right now we have a beautiful shared kitchen in our guest house that has plenty of room to relax and eat.  We don´t actually cook, since that takes work which would defeat the purpose of this trip.  Affter all, eating out is much, much cheaper than buying all the ingredients to do it ourselves.

Sharing one room has been a challenge, it took a good month to eliminate complete chaos and bedtime failure.  Now Shane is settling to sleep in his tent without a peep, our new strategy is for Drew to take Logan out of the room while Shane is fed, read to and put to bed.  Logan enjoys this big brother privelage of staying up later.  And if Drew and I aren´t completely bagged we sneak out of our room and enjoy some rare alone time on our porch or common area.  The boys are used to each other´s peeps in the night and Logan usually sleeps through Shane´s wakeups and early rises. 

As the saying goes... babies eat, sleep and... poop!  The bus ride from Coban to Antigua was smooth sailing for the first leg.  Moments after we had rolled on from our lunch break Shane had one of the biggest explosions in months - leaked right through his pants onto mine.  At least we were on a direct shuttle bus and not a chicken bus, because I have no idea how we could possibly change a diaper when we barely have room to breathe.  (In fact, the last chicken bus ride we took I ended up sitting on the stairs of the bus on top of firewood with both Shane and Logan on my lap while Drew stood hanging out the doorway.)  Shane lay in Logan´s seat, Logan came to the row behind where he squeezed between me and our fellow passenger who amused him. I leaned over the seat and held Shane´s legs up and Drew did the dirty work. We were caught with no change of clothes so Logan´s spare shorts turned into capris for Shane.

A month ago in Tulum we were caught big time.  We headed out for a quick jaunt to the internet cafe, and left our diaper bag in the room.  In the internet cafe, Logan tells us he has to poop.  The internet cafe washroom had no toilet seat, let alone toilet paper.  I take him to the park across the street.  Toilet seat, but no paper.  There was no time to get back to the hotel.  I ask the ladies at the park for something, but was met with shaking heads.  We haven´t left our room without our t.p. since.

We left home with about 0.5% of the toys we own.  Surprisingly this has sufficed, in fact Shane doesn´t even play with his toys.  Yesterday´s toy of choice was a pringles can.  It has been a nice break to only clean up one ziploc bag of toys instead of several rooms full.  We also realize how little we need to keep them amused!

¨getting ready for school¨ time; our small selection of toys

Happy reading new books from the Caye Caulker library

Logan traded 2 of his old toys for a new transformer, everyone wins!