Just Sit Right Back and You'll Hear A Tale

We were finally at sea. Now one of the slight negatives of leaving out of Norfolk is that you have to spend two days at sea before you get to the Caribbean. (Of course, the positive that outweighs that is you don't have to fly to the port if you happen to live in Virginia.) So our first two days were spent in relative luxury just floating about as the ship made its way (at a whopping speed max speed of 25 miles per hour.)

When we made the reservations for the cruise, we looked at various options for sleeping for the little one, finally deciding on a collapsible tent. We did some prep for getting him to sleep in it, but never made fabulous progress - still, he would nap and play in it, so we thought it would be ok. Boy were we wrong. Now, I knew bedtime would be rough because 3 hours in the hot sun during nap time (so no nap was had) makes for rough bedtimes. Throw in being in a strange new environment and we had the freak out to end all freak outs. So the tent was just not going to happen. And so I put him in my bed, got him settled and asleep, and crept out.

I'm not sure if you know about beds on cruise ships. If not, just keep in mind that the keyword is "versatile". So in our room, to make it work for as many different configurations as possible, we had two twins that could be pushed into a King. And that's what we did. Except as the night went on, I got pushed more and more into the middle by the kiddo (who will always choose to sleep perpendicular to whatever way he's meant to sleep), which in turn pushed the beds further and further apart until I was sleeping in what would have been a hammock had there been anything under me. Head on my bed, middle swinging restfully (ha!) in mid-air, feet grasping for purchase on Tim's bed.

In the morning as we pushed the beds back together and considered our options for not doing that again, Tim pipes up, "I can sleep with the doodle, if you want, since I'm thinner than you."

As you might imagine that didn't win him quite as many points as he was hoping for (regardless of the veracity of the statement.)

The first full day on the water was filled with time at the pool. This was really the first time the kiddo encountered a real swimming pool (vs. the sprinkle park at our friend's house or the sprinkle pool we have for the back yard.) He was in heaven. (In fact, he's been asking to go in the pool today and I was very sad to have to remind him that that was just on the boat. So I'm thinking I need to make a run to Target sooner than later for a kiddie pool for the back yard - though it's raining today so we wouldn't be out in the pool most likely anyway.) Honestly, I think he's part fish.

When we got back to the room that night, we found that the bed had been made up as one bed and that they appear to have a way to hook the beds together as it was a reasonably solid king sized bed now. So we put the kiddo in the center (he's young, his back can handle being in the divot!) and from then on sleep was relatively reasonable.

The second full day on the water was much like the first. Lots of pool time. Lots of running about on the decks to see what could be seen. And our first formal night. This began the trend of random strangers everywhere stopping us to tell us what an adorable little boy we had. He really caught everyone's eye. I am now officially dreading his teenage years and trying to determine how big a baseball bat I'm going to have to wield.

The third day we sailed til about 2 p.m. when we docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Which is where the tale will get picked up again tomorrow.