A morning at the Beach

Last Saturday morning we headed to Kihei for a few hours on one of our fave South Shore beaches, Keawakapu. It was a beautiful Maui morning and we were reminded once again why we love it here so much. It was one of those amazing beach days when the weather is just perfect - sunny but not too hot, just a light breeze but not windy, the water was calm but with a few small sets every now and then so Joel could do a little body surfing. And as always, Dean had a blast!! He's a regular little beach bum. He goes to the beach WAY more often than Joel or I do. TuTu (my Mom) takes him just about every Tuesday & Thursday morning.

Dean's made a new friend on their weekday beach outings... Dylan is a few months older than Dean but TuTu says they play pretty well together. Dylan doesn't have verbal language, but instead communicates with sign language. He was born with a condition called Moebius Syndrome, which you can read more about HERE. Basically, Moebius Syndrome is a very rare neurological condition that affects specific cranial nerves to varying degrees. Fortunately Dylan has a mild presentation of the syndrome and it seems that only the nerves of his mouth and tongue have been affected. But this means it will be difficult for Dylan to learn verbal speech (he does not have motor control of the distal portion of his tongue or his lips), but it will be possible with therapy. Dylan will never be able to smile or frown or grimace or kiss. But none of this seems to phase Dean - the two of them have a great time. Dean does realize Dylan communicates differently than he does - if you ask Dean "Does Dylan talk?" he'll say "No. Dylan talks like this..." and move his hands as if he were doing sign language. It's very heart warming. I hope that we can help Dean to nurture these early traits of acceptance and tolerance.

Anyway, I really didn't mean to ramble that much. I'll get to the super cute pics from our morning at Keawakapu!!

Dean had so much fun playing in the sand:
And he was pretty content to chill in the sand hold with Daddy:

But his favorite thing of the whole morning was jumping off the sand ledge left from the South Swell we had the day before. He would stand on top and wait for a wave to come in, then jump off into the foam: