Motored a couple of hours north to Puerto Ballandra today. Weather has been incredibly calm the past couple of weeks and we’re looking at another week or more of it. It’s great. Even better than the calm weather is the cool weather. We’re still using a down comforter at night. We don’t remember being cool at all last season, so we’re enjoying it while it lasts.

Ouest has adopted a new saying recently. She uses it whenever she gets an answer that she doesn’t like.

“Ouest, come and get your lotion on so we can go to the beach.”

“Two more minutes.”

“No, let’s do it now, everyone else is ready.”

“You no talk to me that way. You’re not talking nice to me!”

But I should say that that’s pretty rare for her. For the most part she is amazingly polite when she talks. Please and thank-you are a given, but she also talks really nice to Lowe, especially when we ask her to do something for him. We often ask her to explain things to him, or to share something with him, or to take turns, or whatever, and she does it all very sweetly in a softer voice than usual.

And Lowe, being the younger brother, eats it all up. He copies everything she does these days and any attention she gives him makes him beam. He still wants to hold her hand whenever the opportunity presents itself. Watching him walk up to her, take her hand, and place his just right inside of hers has to be one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. He watches her so closely, inching right around in front of her and zeroing in on whatever it is she is doing at the time. When she moves on he immediately takes over and does the same thing.

Lowe has also become completely obsessed with playing with the lines on the boat. There are a few lines back at the dinghy davits that he is able to take and throw overboard, then methodically haul back up, then lower back down, then haul back up, then…over and over again.

He also can’t get enough of the dinghy. When we land on the beach he immediately walks to the back next to the motor, reaches around for the handle and the kill-switch lanyard and begins his motor noise. When we get back to the boat he doesn’t want to get off, he wants to stand there and pretend to drive just like me.

And both Ouest and Lowe have taken it upon themselves to remind me each time we get in the dinghy to put the “red thing” (the kill-switch lanyard) on my wrist. They never forget.

Ouest found a small dry starfish on the beach today. She was quite proud of her treasure, especially since starfish are something that we talk a lot about. Quite a few of her books have starfish in them and they’ve sort of become “a thing” around here. When we got back to the boat Ali’s enthusiastic reaction had Ouest smiling ear to ear.