The theme for this trip was WATER. Every day we were in some body of water. Literally, every single day. If we weren't swimming in the neighbor's pool, we were at the beach. The kids were in heaven.
Over the past year, Elina has loved swimming on her own in her life jacket. She's really come a long way because she used to be extremely scared of swimming in the pool. Since we were planning on going to the pool almost every day, I wanted her to improve in other aspects of swimming. The main thing I wanted was for Elina to be comfortable putting her face in the water. At first it was hard to convince her to even put her mouth into the water. So we worked on being bumblebees by making a humming sound through our noses. Eli really enjoyed doing this, so Elina started doing it as well. Eli was actually really good at it! Here he is showing off his new talent--Besides the bumblebees, Eli wasn't really adventurous in the pool. He only wanted to "swim" by holding onto the stairs and kicking his feet back. Someone always had to hold him in the pool and if I even made my grip looser, he would start freaking out. Elina was really freaked out of the water at this age, too. What is it that I keep doing wrong? Why are my kids always so afraid of water?? (Although in the picture below, Elina is totally relaxing in the pool on her back...I love that picture!)
Then I thought maybe Elina would enjoy putting her face in the 
water more if she could see underwater. It took a long time to convince her to put on goggles and then to put her face into the water. But slowly, she discovered how cool it was to see other people underwater. Now she can put her face totally in the water with and without goggles on. She likes to hold her nose for now because when she blows bubbles, it blocks her view of things. She'll even swim out a little with her head in the water while holding her nose. I'm so proud of this girl!! Look at her go!We also went to the beach on South Padre Island two times. The kids had a wonderful time.
Before we even went down to Brownsville, they had been talking about the beach every day for a few weeks. I mean, look at the pictures above--Elina's happiness is SO genuine! One of the last times we went to the beach, Eli was deathly afraid of the waves. This time he did not care about the waves. Right after we got him changed and he saw that Ah-Gong was already in the water, Eli went straight into the water without any hesitation and headed for Ah-Gong. It was crazy! In this video, he is just walking through the water, trying to reach Ah-Gong. He is also holding onto his Tonka truck for dear life while he makes his way out there. It took him awhile to reach Ah-Gong, but the kid would not give up. 
Elina loved being in the water, but she also spent a lot of time playing in the sand. We had lots of fun building a little sand castle together. Part of the fun was searching for sea shells to decorate the castle with. 
Evie liked walking in the water (because she naturally likes water), but she also spent a lot of her time there crying.
One thing I noticed when I looked back at our other beach pictures was the similarities between Evie and Eli. Look at this collage below. The picture on the left is Evie at 4 months at the beach. The picture on the right is Eli at 6 months on the same beach. There are definite similarities, but you can also see some differences (e.g. eye shapes). But you can really tell that Evie could probably eat Eli for breakfast. Eli was such a scrawny, little thing!
We also managed to see some wildlife in the water. First we saw a little stingray at the beach. J said that it looked like it might've been injured. Maybe that's why it was hanging out so close to the shore. And then we had the pleasure of swimming in the pool with a snake on the last day!! The kids still wanted to swim and I couldn't get the snake out of the pool, so I just kept an eye on the snake while the kids swam.
We had such a wonderful time in Brownsville this time. Not that we don't usually have fun, but this time was really eventful. We even made it to the children's museum this time! (We've been wanting to go the last 2 times we've gone to Brownsville.) The museum was small, but really fun for the kids. 
Now that we're back, Elina and Evie are really paying for all the time we spent in the water. Both of them have developed some sort of skin sensitivities to the water or the sun or the chlorine or a combination of everything. Either way, I think we need to stay out of the water for a little bit. But it was totally worth it for this trip!
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