37 Weeks

Weight: 17.4 pounds (according to our bathroom scale!)
Favorite activity: Sticking fingers in the sand
Favorite food: Bananas (especially strawberry bananas), mango, passion fruit, fish
Favorite spot: At the beach, in her cabana
Naughtiest moment: eating the sand, crying at Poppy Jeff's coughing
Cutest moment: Waving hi to people, kissing mama
Important milestones: So many this week. I don't know how, but she seemed to grow so much! First airplane ride, first restaurant meal of her very own, waving hello, first trip to a real beach (not one made out of oyster shells!)
How Mom's Feeling: This week, we went to Kauai--our first vacation in 5 years. We've gone on several mini-vacations, but this one was a full 6 days, something we haven't done since our honeymoon to Ireland. It was an amazing and much needed getaway!

Lorelei was a rockstar the entire trip. She did great during takeoff and landing and on the flight in general (despite some stick up their butt-heads sitting in the row in front of us on the trip there!) There were so many things I was worried about regarding Lorelei: that she'd cry the entire flight, that she wouldn't sleep in the hotel crib, that she'd be fussy the entire trip, that she wouldn't nap...And she proved me wrong on all counts!

Nope, Lorelei was a champ the whole trip! She loved the sand, the swimming pool, the chickens that were all over the island and especially the food! What she didn't like, and I mean DID. NOT. LIKE. was the ocean. It did not matter if it was a crashing surf or the gentlest lagoon, it was the ocean and Lorelei treated it like acid. She clutched at us and would start wailing. She would do okay if we started her on the sand and gradually scoot her closer into the water so that the waves lapped at her legs. But even then, she would get upset after about 10-15 minutes.

We had a great time, though. We did a lot of snorkling (3 different beaches)--and even saw some sea turtles; we went on a hike up the Sleeping Giant (until it got too hot); and went tubing down the sugarcane irrigation canals. That had to be one of the highlights of our trip for me. It was SO MUCH FUN! I would totally do it again.

We also ate some amazing food. I pretty much ate fresh fruit and poke every day (poke being raw diced ahi tuna mixed with seaweed and some sauce). We found an awesome fruit stand on the north side of Kauai, and ate some stuff I'd only heard of (and some I'd never heard of!). Our favorites were the strawberry bananas (tiny delicious bananas that were totally full of flavor), lilikoi (or passion fruit, for those on the mainland) and longan (these little fruits kind of like lychee, that tasted kind of like honeydew melon). We also went to this amazing little taco shop (Tiki Tacos) that had the best Mexican food we had ever eaten. Seriously. They make everything there--the tortillas, the queso fresco, the salsas--and all the meats were from the island. SO GOOD! And one day, Brian and I drove up the coast (searching for a fish market to get more poke) and ran into this little roadside stand serving up Hawaiian donuts. Oh. My. God. They were these fried balls of dough that were so crispy on the outside (and coated with sugar) and super soft and doughy on the inside. Barbara and Jeff were lucky we saved two for them!

Lorelei did her share of eating, too! After about two days, we realized we needed to actually start ordering for her, too, otherwise, I was never going to eat a full meal! So Lorelei was able to eat some delicious fruit, a variety of different kinds of fish (cooked, of course. No poke for her!), tofu, scrambled eggs, and a fish taco of her very own! I really was able to get over my fear of sodium for her. How did I do it? I looked at a can of Spam! I realized that a serving of Spam has less than her max amount of daily sodium (1 gram). Clearly, I wasn't going to be giving her any Spam, but that really put it in perspective for me. 

The most memorable part of this trip for me, though, were our sunrise breakfasts. Lorelei refused to switch over to Hawaii time, so we woke up every morning between 5:45 and 6:15 am (which was about 8:45- 9:15 am California time). The plus side of this was that we were able to get ourselves up and out to the super cushy seats to watch the sun rise over the ocean. It was really nice, because not a lot of people were up and about, so it was super quiet, and we could just sit and enjoy each other and whatever fruit we happened to have for breakfast!

All in all, it was a great trip and I'm hoping one we will repeat!

Of course, we took about a million pictures. Here are some of our faves: