More BVIs

Each day Grant adds another day from the BVI trip to his blog (http://www.nauticed.org/blog/). And I grab some pictures from his blog. This first picture is from Cane Garden Bay. It is our first day on the boat and Vivian's first time on the trampoline. As you can see, Alexandra is a pro - she's been on the boat for a couple of days.

Vivian loved it and called it her "circus". Every morning and evening we'd sit out there on the trampoline and watch the sun rise and set.

In the second picture Grant and I are holding up Alexandra and Vivian in a Lion King (or Michael Jackson) moment. The boat is anchored for the night in rocky Lee Bay on Great Camanoe Island. Looks nice, doesn't it. I spent half the night on the decks checking on the anchor as waves pounded those rocks and rain fell in sheets.

In this last picture, that speck is Vivian and me on a sea kayak on the way to the whitest softest beach in White Bay on Guana Island. Vivian and I looked for shells and built a humongous sand castle. Then the swells came in and washed the sand castle away. Jo, Kay, Vanessa and Rod came over in the dingy. Rod, for reasons unknown, jumped out of the dingy and did a face plant in about 3 feet of water. For the return journey, we put Vivian in the dingy which was a good thing because it took me three flips of the sea kayak before I figured out how to leave the beach on it instead of under it.

Good Things About Mothers' Day Out

When they are not telling the mothers what to tell the kids about creationism, the folks at the mothers' day out program aren't a bad bunch. And Vivian's teachers are terrific. They give her a huge hug when she eagerly runs into their class room in the morning and she plants big wet kisses when she leaves the classroom. And in between they teach her, feed her, entertain her, care of her, and change her diapers.

Last week Vivian learned about the five senses. The kids walked on different things like ice, raw beans, cooked beans and pumpkin insides. After school, we bought some pumpkins on the way home. Vivian asked: "Mommy - are we going to cut open the pumpkins and do a sensory walk?" Yep - she really said "sensory walk".

This week they are learning about foods. Vivian and I went to Central Market this evening. I was in a hurry and thought I'd just run in and grab some chicken and run out. Half an hour later I had a shopping cart full of eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, bananas, ginger root, garlic, onions, grapes, edamame, figs, and I few other things I am forgetting. Because Vivian knew the names of these vegetables and insisted she needed to eat them for dinner....

Thank you, Ms Mary and Ms Cas for being Vivian's teachers and doing everything you do for her. And, by the way, what are you covering in class next week?

Moms' Coffee

Soon it will be universally accepted that humans appeared wholly formed from the navel of a giant white fish exactly 3217 years ago.

Till then, poor Dawkins is out there working hard. These days he is peddling his new book. American TV hosts armed with long-held non-self-evident beliefs are pitted against Dawkins and relatively-recently-proven non-self-evident truths. But I was going to leave it alone till Vivian brought home a pamphlet from her mothers'-day-out program today. Mothers are invited to a cup of joe and to discuss how to answer difficult questions asked by our children like "What is heaven like? Why do bad things happen to kids? Was the world really only created in seven days?"

I am neither a mother nor a coffee drinker. So the good people of the church are spared but you, dear Vivian, are not.

What is heaven like?

It's a wonderful place. It's virgins - wall-to-wall. It's a celestial kingdom. It's here on earth. Pick a religion and you'll get matching baggage telling you about heaven and how to get there. But don't hurry up. Because almost universally you have to be dead first.

Why do bad things happen to kids?

Pray hard and stay on the plan to get in to heaven. If bad things still happen, it's God's will. Or it was an accident. Or there are people out there with twisted minds. And nasty diseases.

Was the world really only created in seven days?

Yep.

Shouldn't difficult questions have easy answers. Easy questions too. That was easy.

Back from BVIs

Ahoy. We are back on terra firma after about a week of sailing in the BVIs. The highlights are: Jo didn't leave us for a resort, and Vivian is a bona fide island girl.

The trip started with Vivian saying "Mommy - the Car'ean sea is salty" - about 30 seconds after her first swim in the Caribbean Sea in picturesque Cane Gardens Bay. And when the sail ended, we stayed over in Charlotte Amalie in the USVI for a couple of days. Vivian woke up the last morning and asked "When will we get the boat back ?"

Vivian cusses like a sailor (though this has nothing to do with being on a sailboat). At the Mafolie Hotel in Charlotte Amalie, Jo and I heard her chatting with herself: "Are you fucking kidding me?". And she learned to drink like a sailor. This evening when I popped open a Pale Ale while cooking dinner, Vivian raised her sippy cup and said "Daddy cheers - this is my juice beer".

Here's a picture of Savannah Bay in Virgin Gorda (from Grant's blog: http://www.nauticed.org/blog/) where we spent a couple of nights.

And here's the only picture I took of Vivian during the whole trip - with my iPhone (others had camers and soon there will be more pictures). We were in Garden Bay. The following picture shows Cane Garden Bay from a high point on the highway from Road Town - where I picked up Jo and Vivian from the ferry terminal.