Papaya Mom

It may have not been the perfect first day home, but it came as close as humanly possible.

We arrived on time to Honolulu and met up with Tutu and Bumpa at the airport where Papaya pretended to be shy for about twenty minutes. Poor thing, he body was telling her it was two a.m. so it must have been hard to be nice to all these adults who are there to talk and hug and kiss and tickle you.

She woke up bright and early the next morning at three a.m. Hawaii time, luckily Mama is on East Coast time too so we survived it with little trouble . We ate our first breakfast and unpacked some in our new apartment. We read books and played games and I was so amazed at her ability for imagination.

Example: Opens plastic Easter Egg and tells me the chicken just hatched out of the egg. “We are hatching the eggs Mama.” Then goes on to tell me that one has flown up into the tree and she is going to get a ladder to save it. Once she mimics reaching up she cradles the imaginary chicken and moves on with her game of hatching eggs, lining up the shells and pretending to feed apples to the chickens. It may have happened on one of her cartoons once that a chicken got stuck in a tree (Diego? Wonder Pets?) but darn - she kept that theme going and had such fun with a few empty plastic eggs!

This reminds me one of my goals for living her - minimal if any TV. We are using the code-word “Syracuse” for it (S comes before T and U before V and “SU” is apparently what Syracuse is known for says Adventure Dad). She just zones on it when I put it on and would watch it all darn day. I want the kid to read and play instead, and for myself I want to be a more involved Mama.

When Tutu and Bumpa awoke we went to Cinnamon’s which has beautiful outdoor seating which helps when Papaya wants to do a little leg stretching while I’m eating my Mahi Mahi Benedict. Back at home Bumpa and I cleaned and organized the fridge while Papaya explored her new yard under Tutu’s supervision. The girl has a thing for dirt facials - in fact this lead to one of the two bath/showers we had to take this day!

After the bath and lunch Papaya napped while I got to go grocery shopping at Down to Earth with my new awesome grocery bags and stock up on yummy stuff. I did meal planning through Thursday when we will go to the Farmers Market and get inspiration by what is fresh and in season!

While Maya played I got to organize and unpack some new Bento Boxes, our new Laptop Lunchboxes. I’m going to work this week on putting together the closets/desks in our beautiful new apartment and on spending a lot of time in the front yard letting Papaya play in the great warm outdoors!

Post-nap my brother, his wife, my step brother, his wife and son all came over to spend some family time. We took the Keiki to the beach where Maya made sure to remind Uncle and I that we needed to jump at each wave so no water got into her mouth. Her favorite moments were sitting in the sand with measuring cups - a classic picture of simple and happy childhood. Post-beach we washed off the sand and ate a little dinner before she collapsed into sleep - at 7:30 p.m. which to her little body was 11:30 p.m.

I feel so full and happy about how this move is turning out. We miss Adventure Dad of course, but we get to talk on the phone right now and things here are as well as I could hope. The Papaya is loving her “new” bed which is actually my one from childhood (how cool is that?) and her family here. I am looking forward to a week of appointments, reunions with friends and sitting in my front yard in paradise watching my daughter play happily with a rake and a hula hoop.

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