the pacific coast

madelyn took in her first view of the pacific ocean today in del mar, california. she was so excited! i didn't catch it in this picture, but she was squealing and waving her arms with excitement. we stayed for a while just watching all the surfers (sitting on their boards, there wasn't much in the way of surf) before going down a little ways to a kiddie park and maddie got a swing with a view! not only was there an ocean view, but there were train tracks so we turned her to face the other way in the swing when the train went by. she wasn't that in to the train. we didn't actually go down to the beach today we just walked down for a look after getting breakfast.

next we drove around going down 'memory lane' for daddy. we went by the house he lived in, the hospital he was born in, and so on. i don't think maddie was taking notes...

next we went to the scripps aquarium to prove to everyone that maddie really wasn't afraid of fish any more. she started out a little slow, but by the time we got to the seaweed tank she was running up, climbing up on the little step to see better and pointing out the fish to us. in the picture nana is showing maddie and papa some fish. the seaweed tank was one of the coolest things i have seen at an aquarium - it was around two stories tall! they even had a little theater seating built in so that you could sit and take it all in. maddie really liked these spotted fish and some bright orange ones in the tank.

they also had 'tide pools' set up outside to look in and older kids could listen to instructors tell about the sea life and touch a few animals. for real hands on action they had an area with fake rocks with plastic/rubber tide pool animals in water. madelyn was a little afraid to touch anything for a while. she would get real close, sometimes squat down for a look, watch the other kids, but wouldn't touch anything. she finally felt safe enough to touch a lobster leg a few times before deciding to pick up an octopus (i think that she picked the octopus because a little boy had just put it down in the water). she kept picking it up, turning it over and then dipping it back in the water over and over. once the front of her dress was nice and wet (and she was getting brave enough to try putting it in her mouth) it was time to move on.


as a final highlight of the day, madelyn got to have her first ice cream (well sherbet). the first two bites were more like licks because she didn't really like how cold it was, but once she got the hang of things she managed to eat the whole scoop! and the sugar didn't even keep her up later.

thankfully, madelyn has done really well with the time change. she did get up at 4:38am this morning but slept off and on until 6:45am so we got a little more sleep. matt and i were exhausted since we didn't get into bed until well after midnight and every extra minute helped. then she went until almost 3pm before getting a nap. she has been such a trooper and hopefully she will keep it up for the rest of our trip. tomorrow we are headed to the highly acclaimed san diego zoo - i am hoping that it lives up to the hype. love.