Another month zips past. Ouest’s Spanish is improving greatly. She knows dozens of words and is using them pretty regularly. And of course her swimming continues to improve daily. She is to the point now that we let her go out swimming to the deep stuff by herself. We watch her and call her in when she goes too far. And now when she gets tired while swimming she just flips right over and back-floats her way in.

Lowe took off yesterday. Literally. Up until now his running has been that cute little toddler run—tiny steps and penguin arms. Then all of the sudden yesterday we were on a hike when he just took off running—full sprint style with long strides and swinging arms. He laughed and laughed at how fast he was going. Seriously I bet his run speed at least doubled. He’s closing the gap on Ouest every day.

He’s also gone gonzo in the water. He’s not swimming on his own, but upon getting to the beach he immediately throws his body in as far as he can without going under. He kicks and walks his hands along like that until he gets bored and then he moves on to his boogie board. I swear his balance on that thing is better than mine. He jumps on it belly first and lands perfectly, then he pops right up into surf position. When we get back to the west coast of Mainland we’re getting these two a board.

Anyway we’re still hanging out in Puerto Ballandra. The weather has been pretty well perfect, and with grandparents flying into Loreto in a few days we really don’t feel like venturing too far away.

The bay has been inundated with bees—pretty much anywhere we look we see them and we always hear them. I got stung yesterday and Lowe finally got hit today. Right in the thumb while picking up a piece of driftwood. Oh man the sad painful cry.

I found a broken motor mount—a rather unhappy discovery. One of the two that I replaced, but not the original broken one. When I last did them I adjusted them until I got the shaft aligned as closely as I could. This meant tightening both the front mounts down about an inch further than they had been originally. I suspect this is what caused the mount to fail. So today I tightened them up closer to where they had been originally. This left the shaft a couple of thousandths further out of alignment, but seems to leave the motor in a more comfortable position. Time will tell I guess. I was happy to have the extra mount on hand, and was also quite pleased with my one-hour-fifteen-minute total job time.