BEACH WITHDRAWAL

The vacation was wonderful. I highly highly recommend the Leelanau County area of Michigan. The beaches are pristine, the water is crystal clear and you can hit a different beach every day to keep things interesting. It's pricey though so, if you go, bring as many groceries as you can with you or you'll pay double at the local grocery store.

We stayed in Glen Arbor which has the Cherry Republic store. Cherry Republic makes cherry everything; wine, fudge, salsa, bbq sauce, cookies, candy etc... I love cherries so it was a bit like visiting heaven. Every day. For a week.

My husband was also infected with cherry love and smuggled home 5 jars of the cherry salsa, which he stubbornly and annoyingly refuses to share.

The babeola loved the beach. Loved swimming. She had absolutely no fear at all and screamed with joy every time Daddy threw her up in the air in 5 foot deep water. She didn't even care when he missed her a few times and she went completely under. She'd pop up to the surface courtesy of her life jacket and screech 'More? Pwease?'

The pre-vacation wedding was also fun because the babeola looked adorable. One of the bridesmaids even came up to us and told us how adorable the babeola was. Like we didn't know! We kept her up until 10 and let her dance her heart out--she spins like a dervish. We called it a night when the babeola kept trying to do the electric slide and, in the process, threatened to trip everyone on the dance floor. For some reason, moving her three feet to the left, out of the way, was cause for a huge nuclear meltdown. So we ran before the shrieks sprialed up to the octave where they start to echo (I'm not exaggerating either).

The big surprise of the last week was the fact that my daughter can read letters and numbers. I'm astonished. I've always suspected she might be smart, but this seems to prove it. I still can't quite wrap my mind around it. I've been assured that I don't need to do anything special for her, just carry on as usual. However, given that I was a bit precocious academically as a child and am not happy, in retrospect, with how it was handled, I'm going to be a little more hands on as the babeola progresses.