Marco Island

In October, we took Auggie to Marco Island for the first time, and he loved it!  We were a little nervous about how he would react to the beach, but much to our relief, he enthusiastically embraced it.  The last thing we wanted was the stress of monitoring a fussy baby who was trying to eat sand all day.  On the contrary, Auggie dutifully built his sandcastles with not even one sand-eating attempt!  What a kid.

{playing on the beach}

Before Auggie was born, we stayed in one of the hotels right on the beach.  We love the beach access, the tennis courts, Menchie's Frozen Yogurt (iykyk), and the great views.  Nowadays, we need two rooms with the little guy, which means the hotels are just too expensive.  For this trip, we booked an Airbnb right across the street from the Marriott and hoped for the best.

It turns out that the Airbnb was the way to go!  I did some research to make sure there was a tennis court on the property, and the set up was perfect.  Tennis is one of our favorite Florida things to do...it's not Marco Island without tennis!  Not only that, but we still had an amazing view from our balcony.

{view from our Airbnb}

 {playing in the water}

{walks on the beach}

In the evenings, the Marriott hosts a free show with a fire dancer.  All the kids love it and sit around in a big circle to watch.  Auggie was absolutely mesmerized!  He couldn't take his eyes off the performance, and his concentration toe was in full view.  He always pops up the big toe on his left foot when he's thinking really hard...haha.  It's one of my most favorite Auggie quirks.  Too cute!  

{watching the fire dancer}

The only downsides of the trip were the red tide and Auggie contracting a virus on the last day.  We didn't realize for the first couple of days that the red tide was in full swing, but thankfully we only had one instance of irritated eyes after a windy run.  On the last day we were there though, Auggie woke up with an extremely hot fever, and we were so worried the red tide had affected him somehow.  But after taking him to the doctor, we were assured that his virus was unrelated to the algae bloom.  Thank goodness.  It seems the timing was just coincidental.

I will say that the flight home was rough, and we were scared.  Auggie was burning up, and he ended up with a 104 fever for almost four days.  But he's ok now, and back to his happy self.

All in all, a great trip!

{our little traveler}