Family Time in Costa Rica: Settling in, exploring, learning some limits of no routine
10-days since we arrived at our AirBnB house in the jungle near San Juanillo, Costa Rica. The family time is massive in quantity and quality. This is just what we had hoped for, and forced by putting us all in a little house in the jungle with one car!
That does not mean to say the days are a breeze. They tend to include all of the following phases, and some several times:
peaceful times with Whitney and on my own…
early morning and late at night surrounded by the darkness of the jungle and the white noise of animals
during the day nature surrounds and jungle animals like monkeys pop by as we relax in and around the pool with Scarlett, Nora and Hazel
sitting on the beach watching the waves as the kids (for a few minutes) play together independently!
active play and exploration…
pool time outside the door multiple times per day
beaches along the Guanacaste Coast that we explore, a new one every day or two at this early stage
excursions that we mix in like horseback riding, zip lines, marine tour
errands and chores…
dishes (no dishwasher!)
picking up toys/towels etc.
grocery shopping
USA and Australia “life” items, medical and health insurance items, making appointments for immunizations, etc.,
updating and making future travel bookings, etc.
parenting… obviously this is the whole time, but it peaks and valleys at two particular moments. The peak is when it is a part of any of the sections above and/or when we are doing school work with Scarlett (grade 1 work) and Nora (pre-school work). Being a part of these moments is at the core of this experience. The valleys are the meltdowns… it obviously comes with the time together and we are all in, but it doesn’t make them any less jarring to parent through and recover from. After a meltdown the kids move on almost immediately, and completely, to a new activity seemingly not at all concerned by the past XX minutes of misery. It takes Whitney and I a while to catch up. We are learning to more rapidly repair ourselves and join them in the post-meltdown joy!
The other observation of unwinding is that Whitney and I are starting to discuss what level of routine we want to adopt. We have been very loose with it so far, but that has also been easy as we are just settling in. But as we look ahead to the next three weeks we can see some pros and cons of this approach.
The beginning and end of the days are starting to take shape, the regularity of the ~6am sunrise and 6pm sunset in Costa Rica is a welcomed local environment from the almost 9pm summer sunset time in Seattle (although I personally love those long days!!!).
So it comes down to how structured we want the 7am-4pm hours to be each day. Right now, we have a couple of excursions booked (horse riding, yesterday and today, and marine tour on Monday Aug. 19) but otherwise we decide the night before what we think tomorrow holds. Wow, has this changed a lot to my fully scheduled life just a few weeks ago. There is certainly a feeling of freedom today that is new. But there is also a feeling of exposure on how I use this time that I didn’t have when I had my full time husband, parent, and employee life scheduled out weeks in advance. This world is still very new, lots to learn and explore!
Below are some photos from this week that capture the phases above!
