Chin Straps, Poi, Poke, & Beaches

On the day after Christmas, we celebrated Willow's birthday for the third time--my parents threw her a baby luau.  It was a lovely day, one of those perfect Volcano days when the sky is a brilliant blue and everything is green and bright.  Willow loved it there.  She spent the afternoon crawling around while we set up for the party.

We could not for the life of us get her chin strap out of her mouth though.  At least she kept her hat on that way.

This dress was  mine when I was her age, though I doubt anybody appreciated that besides me and my mom. 

We spent the entire trip doing our best to feed Willow what we were eating--which meant we all ate pretty well.  Willow tried all traditional luau food, including poi, and squid luau, macaroni salad, lomi salmon, and haupia.  The poi was okay (why wouldn't it be, after all, mixed with milk and sugar), the squid luau was rejected, no surprise, but so were the mac salad and the lomi salmon.  Hmph.  She liked the haupia though.  And loved poke.

We placed a piece of coconut cake in front of her, fully expecting the traditional baby-covered-in-cake experience, but this is what we got instead:

My hands are all sticky!  I'm tired!  All these people are staring at me!  And I've had to eat weird food all day! 

So that was the end of that.  But the rest of us had fun. 

We spent the rest of the trip trying to go to the beach as much as possible--three times in ten days is pretty good for us, really.  She went to one white sand beach, and actually played in the sand for the first time...

 

She could have done this all day.

She also went to two black sand beaches, where she discovered that the water is cold and the rocks are plentiful. 











And the sand doesn't taste as good either.












She loved everyone, and really did let my mom hold her and kiss her sometimes. 

But she adored no one so much as her Auntie Hannah, who wore herself out playing with Willow.

It was a lovely trip, and I miss it there all the more being back in the gray snow and the cold and the no going outside. What does one do with a child and no beach and no outside and no teams of aunties and grandparents and cousins to play with her?