Day 5 – 31 March 2011

Alexis still didn't sleep great through the night, but we did what we had to. When we got up for good in the morning, her rash was virtually all gone. We put one more application on just for good measure, but were happy that it wasn't anything more severe. Definitely no more papaya for her until we figure out it was something else.

Ate breakfast together and wanted to take her to the beach this morning. We bought her a bucket of beach toys and brought our towels down to find a shady spot in the hot sand. We weren't sure how she would like it and she didn't really take to it much in the beginning. After a little bit of watching us play, she joined in. She liked playing with the sand and knocking over any castles that we built. She also kept trying to crawl away into the sunny area where the sand was hot. We told her no and that the sand was going to be hot; she did it anyway and cried when she got to the hot part so we had to get her and bring her back. She did a great job finding all the things that weren't sand – rocks, sticks, shells, and giving them to us. We threw them away so she didn't try to eat them. Nicole went into the ocean to swim a little and the waves were pretty intense. Fish would flock around you if you had any type of food, like bread. Dozens of foot long fish would be at your feet in a matter of seconds. Nicole almost got bombarded by a pelican that was diving into the ocean for food. There was a family that was playing at the shore and feeding the fish. They caught a baby sea turtle, but we later found out that it was probably dead; only approximately .2% of sea turtles actually survive getting back into the water so that made sense. They also later caught a fish with their bare hands; also already dead. I took a picture for them and emailed it to them later since they didn't have their camera. They also gave us a tip that about a mile down the coast, right around sunrise (5:45), there were monkeys that come out in the trees to eat breakfast. I was a little skeptical, but if we were going to be up anyway I'd give it a try. Alexis went into the ocean a little bit with Nicole, and she didn't really mind it too much after a little bit. Of course before we left the beach that day, Alexis put a small handful of sand in her mouth – she didn't think it tasted very good.

Due to the fact that we had sand all over us and the tiny showers at the top of the beach never wash it all off, we went straight to the pool for a bit before lunch. We were all hungry and thirsty by that time and ate another casual lunch. It didn't take Alexis long to fall asleep after that. When she woke up, we went back in the pool because she loves it so much and it was very hot. Dinner was the usual again and by now it was getting to be monotonous, so we were glad we were moving on for the next week of our trip. There were a few sit-down restaurants, but it was hard enough feeding Alexis off the buffet and nothing on those menus really excited us enough to go so we stuck with the buffet every night.

Tonight's performance was a carnival on the street right outside the hotel. They basically put on a song and dance performance for us with Costa Rican traditions. Since it was a little earlier tonight and Alexis likes music and dancing, we figured she would like this. Instead, she fell asleep before it started and continued to sleep through the loudness. We saw Rob & Christina (again, for probably the fifth time that day – it's interesting how the resort can be so big, but you see the same people over and over) at the show and they stayed longer than we did. It was fun to watch the dancers that were good at it, but nothing really that exciting to see there. Alexis woke up and we took that as our cue to leave. Since we were all tired, we went back to the room to go to sleep. Alexis was awake now and didn't really want to. Moving her to crib was not happening and so back in the stroller she went. It took her being pushed around for another half hour or so until she fell back asleep. We decided to leave her in the stroller for the night rather than risk her waking up again right then.