cruise day 5

We were at sea all day today. Dennis woke us early, promptly at 7:06, when he announced "the sun is up--it's daytime now--it's time to get up, guys!". We told him it wasn't time to get up and he said "but it's daylight out there!" (letting me know that an interior cabin might be nice the next time we do this). We agreed that the sun was up but told him we weren't ready to get up yet. He climbed down from his bed and into ours to try and physically get me up but soon gave up and fell asleep between us. We spent our morning in the pool and Dennis played 'shark'. He would grunt the theme from Jaws as he chased us, and when he caught one of us, he'd grab an arm and pretend to gnaw a hand as he said "num num num num" in his best monster voice. He also practiced his swimming and blowing bubbles and monkey walking, and had he done this as asked when he was back in swim class, he'd have been the prize student. He also invented a new game where he would swim up and say he wanted to tell one of us a secret. He'd lean in and blow a raspberry on the cheek of his victim, right by the ear, and then he would giggle and say "I made you laugh!".

This morning at Camp Carnival, he apparently met Funship Freddy, the Carnival mascot, and he came out wearing a whale-tail hat and carrying a new storybook that Freddy had autographed. He couldn't stop talking about his new friend Freddy. This afternoon, we joined in a family scavenger hunt for Camp Carnival where we had to use stairs and not elevators and answer a list of questions about the ship (camp is on floor 12 while our room is on floor 4 on the other end of the ship). We were the first back, surprisingly, and we did all the little extras to get the bonus points. We had to wear our swimsuits outside of our clothes, one of us had to wear a luggage tag on an ear (me), one had to wear a men's tie (Dennis), we all had to wear mismatched shoes, and we all had to have red smiley faces on our foreheads (which I drew on with lipstick). We won, and Dennis was ECSTATIC to get the plastic gold trophy. He announced "I won my first trophy!" and showed it to every stranger we passed. He showed Gran and Pop and Gigi and Allison, and he insisted on taking the thing to dinner with us. He was so cute that we didn't mind a bit.

It's been a great day, though we got called to camp to have a talk with him about pushing the other children. He would push them and then apologize, so they let him stay after he promised to stop. I suppose he's a polite bully! We'll be picking him up soon enough, so we're glad to be able to finish packing while he plays. What an awesome vacation! I'd be afraid of major letdown afterward, but we'll have fun at the lake all weekend with Ju-Ju and Steve and Gigi and Allison, and we have Chloe's birthday party to go to, so we've still got some fun things on the agenda. I'm so thankful that we were able to do this for Dennis and for ourselves--what a nice getaway for the family and our friends, and a fantastic trip for a three-year-old!