Nicholas had a great time on "the big boat."
He was definitely more interested in and appreciative of a wider range of experiences than last year, but he also had a shorter tolerance for long dinners and was more forceful about needing to do Nicholas activities rather than just chilling while everyone else played trivia or sat and talked.
Between all of our cameras we took over 1,000 pictures. Of those I narrowed it down to around 180 that are in the album here. I'm going to try to now pick a couple dozen to use to narrate the trip. For all of the pictures, check out the Gallery. I will also probably put some others in posts over the next week.
Nicholas' favorite part of the ship was the "Nicholas size pool" hands down. We took him twice over the course of the trip (once on each of the at sea days) and only managed to limit it to that by convincing him that it was closed the other 5 times a day he asked. I felt pretty guilty as he walked around reciting "Nicholas size pool closed. No open. Closed." There are multiple pools but the one we let him in was 1 foot deep and had a sprinkler and a slide. His favorite things to do were jump in, kick his feet in the water to splash, and go down the slide.
The first day he kept falling backwards on the slide (hitting his head once, which he mentions everytime he talks about the slide in the pool) and having to be caught at the bottom so he didn't submerge (problematic with the ear tubes).
But the second day he was doing it all by himself, as long as we reminded him at the top to lean forward. He absolutely loved the pool, so much so that the first day he was livid when I made him stop even though his entire body was turning blue and he had smacked his head.
Nicholas also constantly wanted to go outside. This year we had a balcony and he wanted to go outside whenever we were in the room.
There is no real harm in this, although he did make us pretty nervous with constantly talking about wanting to jump in. We had to keep reminding him that only boats go in that water, not people.
In Bermuda itself, we created a jam-packed schedule. The first day we went on a walk from the smallest drawbridge in the world (there is a 2-ft or so section that opens up so a sailboat mast can pass through)
along part of an old railway trail
and saw a cool old fort with an amazing view.
Then after a quick lunch we went on a glass-bottom boat. Nicholas was lukewarm about the boat ride
but LOVED watching the fish through the bottom when we got to the reef
and thought feeding the fish bread and watching them swarm it was one of the coolest things ever.
He had such a busy day that he didn't have a chance to nap until 3:30 and of course at that point he was so overtired and overstimulated that he refused every attempt we made at a nap. Only to fall asleep at dinner and sleep through the entire almost 2-hour long meal in my arms.
Since Nicholas napped until 8pm and it was our only night in port, we seized the chance to go off the ship that evening. We took pictures with a moongate
walked around some, and watched part of a retreat ceremony (military music and dancing performance done at sunset).
The next day we spent the morning at the aquarium/zoo. Nicholas was so excited that he literally jumped around the aquarium part chattering (or more accurately chanting, since he was talking in time to his jumping) about the fish. We saw some pretty cool animals, but our favorite section from last year was closed for renovations. Luckily by then Nicholas had forgotten my promises about a white alligator and had gotten distracted by the playground.
He has never done an enclosed slide before and was too scared to go in. So I climbed up from the bottom until he could see me and then inched my way down as he came down slowly so he could see me the whole way. It took just the once to show him there was a way out and it was safe and then he did it on his own probably 3 dozen times, laughing and grinning each time down.
I'm glad I only had to go up once because man did that hurt.
And that afternoon we managed to squeeze in a quick (as in 20 minutes) trip to the beach. Since we had so little time, we just went to the little cove by the ship, so it wasn't nearly as pretty as the other beaches, but for Nicholas' purposes it was fine.
As usual with new experiences (because he doesn't remember it from last summer), it took him a few minutes to warm up to the idea but then he got braver and braver. Pretty soon he was walking in up to his chest and would have kept going if I would have let him. But even holding onto him, I wasn't comfortable letting him getting any deeper.
He was so comfortable that he plopped down into the water to "swim" like he does in the pool
and kicked
Much to his father's surprise, Nicholas really is a water child
The last sea day most people sleep in, but Nicholas will have none of that so we tried to go play mini-golf before it got crowded. It was way too windy, but since noone was using the basketball court, that became our backup and I think Nicholas had more fun there anyway. We ended up with most of the family out kicking soccer balls and shooting baskets. And with the rolling of the ship and the insane wind, hilarity was a given. Nicholas was working really hard on dribbling. He never got more than 2 touches, I don't think, but his focus was intense.
And then he kept trying to shoot, which of course didn't work very well.
The ball was too heavy and the basket too high. But he had such a great time!
Nicholas completely idolizes his uncles. He loves his aunts and grandparents (and whenever we went anywhere, Nicholas insisted on holding Aunt Shayna's hand, no one else would do), but he looks up to his uncles in a unique way. This gives them incredible power because he imitates them in everything and they can teach him something in about 3 seconds. Luckily they used their power for good. Or at least in neutral ways. One of these ways was teaching Nicholas the fist bump, which has now become his go-to.
So much so that at one point Brian asked Nicholas to shake hands and Nicholas said, "No, let's fist bump!" They also sort of taught him rock, paper, scissors.
I don't think Nicholas ever got the hang of doing any other than rock, but he sure had fun.
And of course there was formal night, which really is just a big photo-op, but since I love pictures, I am happy for it. We got a couple good family formal shots:
But I like these at least as much:
Nicholas with his Uncle Mike on the balcony (can you believe that water???) waiting for the rest of us to be ready:
Sleeves still rolled up from dinner:
Hanging with Daddy:
Posing with Mommy:
We had a great time and all things considered, Nicholas did really well. He definitely gave us trouble with napping and had difficulty making it through all of dinner in peace. And there were a few major meltdowns. But given what we were asking of him, that really isn't too bad. And we felt much better when we happened to run into both the family that was next to us at dinner and the family in the room that adjoined ours and they each spontaneously commented on how amazing well-behaved he was. Since they are the people he was most likely to have annoyed, it was a huge relief to hear that.
Looks like a GREAT way to vacation! Thanks for posting all of the fun pictures!
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