Dear Wigleaf,

Greetings from the family resort where we are vacationing with our two-and-a-half-year-old. Yesterday, I saw the most outrageous sunburn on a shiny pale ass, a band aid floating in the turquoise water, a man take off his socks and sweep palmfuls of debris from his deck chair. What I mistook for flakes of skin were actually tiny yellow leaves that had fallen from the tree overhead.

I'm more hydrated here than I am in LA. The water just seeps into your skin through the air. I urinate often. I sleep terribly. On our second day, I skipped watching the sun set over the Pacific so I could lie in bed for twenty minutes without being disturbed.

What can be said about traveling with a toddler? Each day I die a thousand deaths only to get up the next day and die a few more. I finish the black nubs of bananas and pizza slices with just the cheese gnawed off. I may have gotten a stye? I witness my son experience small things for the first time. So many mundane miracles. I stare at his slumbering face in the dark until his features dissolve and lose all meaning.

Aloha,

Stephanie