New Year's & The Cruise, Part I

Hello! I've gotten so engrossed in my Beachbody stuff that I've been spending a lot of time on that. So forgive me! Also, with the advent of Facebook I find myself adding pictures there and updating that quite a bit, so I feel like everyone knows everything going on with us through that avenue.

Back to the cruise.... We had a wonderful time after an insane New Year's Week leading up to the trip. The weekend after Christmas, Matt & I were sick. Tuesday, 12/30 was when Max got his chunky thigh caught in the slats in his crib and we couldn't get it out, so Matt had to use his hand saw to release his leg. Ironically, the brand of saw was "Fat Max". New Year's was low key with my friend Nadine and her 9 year-old son, Tyler, coming over for some board games and Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve. Thursday, New Year's Day, Max started getting sick and that night I noticed his breathing was labored. I thought I was being crazy, so I didn't call about it til the next day - won't do that again! Matt also hit his foot into the island in our kitchen and we thought he broke his toe. Friday we found out he had broken his foot! When I called Max's pediatrician Friday morning, they told me to come in right away when I described what I saw - his little belly going in and out quickly and his ribs showing too. They had me give him two nebulizer treatments and a steroid. His blood oxygen levels seemed to be falling, so we almost got admitted to the hospital, but they started improving, so they sent us home with our very own nebulizer, instructions to use it every couple hours and to come back the next day for a follow up. Saturday morning (less than 24 hours before our flight!!), my mother-in-law and I went back to the doctor's. That ended with us being sent to the hospital for chest X-Rays to check for pneumonia and bronchitis. After a tense couple hours, Max got the all clear and we were FINALLY able to start thinking about packing for the much anticipated cruise. Whew! We desperately needed a vacation after the craziness of the Christmas season and then the previous week.

We woke at 3:45 a.m. and were out the door by 4:20 a.m. Everyone was sleepy, but excited. We made it out of D.C. at 7 a.m. and then our plane had to wait to land so we ended up missing our connecting flight in Atlanta. Did you know the Atlanta airport is the busiest airport in the world? Neither did I until I walked in and it became quite obvious as we tried to pick our way through the throng of people and figure out when we could get another flight. Thanks to Matt's broken foot we got some priority treatment, and I think that helped us be the first ones to get available seats on the next flight. So FINALLY, an hour or two later we were on our way to Florida! When we made to Ft. Lauderdale and took the Royal Caribbean bus to the port, it was as if the heavens opened and the angels sang when we saw the ship...."AHHHHHH" (that was angels singing).

We were on Royal Caribbean Independence of the Seas, currently the largest cruise ship in the world. It was massive. I'm not sure how many floors it had, but there were something like 17 bars, the Promenade with stores on either side cabins that overlooked it and where parades were held several times during the week. We made it to our room, which had a balcony. We had a balcony on our honeymoon cruise and highly recommend it. If you can choose anything to splurge on when cruising, choose a balcony. We got free room service for breakfast every morning (you should always tip the room service delivery person...which leads me to an aside. Just bring plenty of ones when you cruise and when in doubt, just hand a couple to whomever you see. Cruising can be very economical, but we grew weary of the constant request for tips - there's the standard tips for the cabin steward, waiter, assistant waiter, head waited, etc. then when you get off the boat and do an excursion it's, "Don't forget your driver!", "Don't forget the bathroom attendant!" "Don't forget the kayak guy", etc., etc.....) Back to breakfast on the balcony - it was heaven! There's nothing like drinking coffee, eating danishes and fruit and basking in the sun and watching the blue water flow passed you.

I must say one of the highlights of the trip for me was that Sue/Nana offered to care for Max almost exclusively all week. We had rooms next to each other with adjoining balconies so Max could run around naked from one room to the other in all his glory. He loved it and I loved the ability to do my own thing for much of the time and be with Max the rest of the time. Nana took Max to Fisher-Price play time from 9-9:45 and I usually went too. Most of the time it was just Max and another one or two kids. It was nice for him to have time to play. After that, Nana would usually take him to the baby section of the H2O Zone. He'd play and splash for a bit, then it was back to the room for a nap. The rest of his and Nana's day sort of followed that pattern the whole week: wake, eat, play, swim, nap, lather, rinse, repeat. At night Nana often stayed with Max so we could all go do our own things (casino, trivia, games, etc.), but a couple nights I went to a show with Sue. Wednesday night, we got a babysitter and all went to the ice show. YES - this ship had an ice rink! Amazing.

Originally, I had planned to have a sitter after Max was in bed for two nights and then once when he was awake during dinner time. I was pretty uncomfortable with how the ship did the whole babysitter thing. I thought they had people on board specifically for babysitting. Guests had to pay cash to their sitters and I soon found out that the sitters were crew who were off duty and just wanted some extra money. The woman they sent to our room was very reserved and nice and even had a 9 year old daughter in her home country, but after the first night I had a crazy mom moment. I was trying to go to sleep after the ice show and I suddenly had a very vivid image of the sitter throwing Max over the balcony into the deep blue sea. I couldn't go to sleep after that for a while. I still get a sick feeling remembering that image. I kept telling myself that I was being crazy and that wouldn't happen, but I couldn't shake the feeling the next day, so I shared it with Matt and he said that I had to go with my gut and if I wasn't comfortable, to cancel her. I didn't want to hurt her feelings because I knew she needed the money and I thought that, most likely, everything would be okay. Then I had to listen to my inner Oprah (sorry Oprah haters!). : ) Oprah always says to listen to your intuition, don't ignore it and wave it away and tell yourself you're crazy. So, I decided that I should cancel for the next two nights. I figured, this ship is huge, I've never seen this woman before, I'll never see her again. I even left some money for her at the front desk so she wouldn't lose the money she was counting on for that night. Wouldn't you know that I ran into her later that day, right before she was supposed to come to our cabin and babysit??? It figures! I asked if she knew I had cancelled and she didn't know yet. I felt terrible! BUT, I still feel that her hurt feelings were of no consequence to me if it meant my son being safe. It sounds so obvious to me as I write it, but I'm a people pleaser and it's hard to think of anyone being upset with me. So Max didn't get thrown overboard and we still managed to have an evening of fun the last night by each taking 30 minutes to stay with him while the others went out. So everyone got two hours of free time and only 30 minutes of Max sitting time.

We had a fabulous week and even went on a couple of excursions in Costa Maya and Cozumel. We had to cancel our Landrover Jungle excursion because it involved walking in caves and Matt couldn't do that with his broken foot, so in Belize we only tendered ashore - a scary experience in it's own right: small boat, longer ride than I was expecting and the feeling that my baby could fall in the ocean at any moment as we were very close to the water and we weren't wearing life preservers. We just stayed in the tourism village and peered out of the bars that were blocking the residents from coming in. It was a very poor area. The funniest thing in Belize were some of the gift shop items that said "Belize" on them. They had things like wooden spoons for cooking that someone had taken a sharpie and written "Belize" on or a tacky life preserver wall clock or shot glass with it written on there in Sharpie. It was mainly one shop that did that, but it was hilarious. I came home and wrote "Belize" on one of the wooden spoons I already have and now I have a Belizian souvenir! Matt said he was getting ideas for a whole line of "Manassas, VA" souvenirs! The tender back to our ship was a little larger and more stable, so I wasn't nervous.

The next two days were so fun that I am going to save a whole post just for them. For now, I am going to leave it at this and give you a break from reading! I think it's obvious this was the trip of a life time. Thanks Nana & Pappy for taking us!!!