It was a busy morning.  We started with Logan’s routine dental appointment at 8am.  When we finally got to the dental chair, Logan was hesitant, but finally was willing to sit on the chair with me.  The hygienist managed to clean with his teeth without any crying.  We decided to defer taking x-rays this time to make this visit simpler.  The dentist did not see any obvious cavities.  He did suggest that Logan’s teeth are quite tight together, and thus from now on, we have to do a better job flossing to avoid cavities.

      I then took Logan to school and met up with Stuart there for Logan’s first parent teacher conference.  Logan’s main teacher and the school director sat with us to talk.  It was a longer meeting than scheduled since the director was quite chatty, but it was a constructive meeting.  Basically Logan’s behavior is consistent with what we observe at home.  According to the teachers, Logan is not a risk taker and prefers in his safe zone.  He likes to hang out only with his friends, Rohan, Zach, Ian and Jaime.  He prefers playing with building toys, and will shy away from any other or new toys.  He prefers to be an audience for group activities, and will stay in the back to observe instead.  His preference extends to food too; when classmates are trying new tastes for some learning experience, Logan will refuse to take bites.

      Stuart and I agreed with the teachers’ observation.  We do baby Logan a lot at home which we have to stop soon.  We also now have many things to do and change to help build up Logan’s confidence and improve his social skills.

     After spending a few days with Mickey and his friends during the cruise, Connor is quite fond of them now.  Yesterday when he saw the Minnie luggage tag that we had for disembarking, he was holding it dearly and gave it a few kisses too.  This morning he kept pointing to the Mickey on my PJ when he noticed it.  When the Mickey Clubhouse was showing this morning, Connor immediately gave a standing ovation.  He stood up and gave the biggest claps that he could; he was so happy while watching the show.  I guess we now have a Mickey fan in the house.

     Connor also likes to mimic what Logan does.  When Logan takes off socks, he will try.  When Logan points to the ears, eyes or head, he will do the same.  When Logan flies a rocket around, he will walk around coping him too.  Today during our walk, Logan was walking backward for fun.  Connor immediately wanted to do the same, but he did not know how and ended up just walking around in circle, like a dog chasing his tail.  It was very funny.

     Connor is a lot more daring than Logan was.  He is more willing to try new things, and climb up and down anything on his own.  When we were playing today, all of a sudden we saw him standing on top of one of his little carts.  He was so proud of himself for standing so still.  His balance is definitely much better than Logan’s too.

     This evening after dinner, Logan, Connor and I walked into Logan’s room to play.  As soon as I saw Scottie sleeping on his bed, I said “Oh no, Scottie should not be sleeping in the bed!”.  Then Logan responded “It is ok. Scottie should stay. After bath, Scottie should sleep with me since he is MY cat.”  That was very sweet! 

     Logan has been saying some funny things lately.  Logan knows what green and red traffic lights mean.  Yesterday on the way home, I made a right turn after stopping at the red light.  Logan suddenly panicked and screamed out “Mommy, you should stop at the red light!  Stop!!”.  I tried to explain to him that I could go because it was a turn.  Then he sounded disappointed and had a lecturing tone “Mommy, you always drive the wrong way!”  Another day while driving home too, Logan suddenly said to me “Let’s stop by a store”.  I asked him the reason for that, he said “I NEED to go get a superhero!”. 

     Logan never likes to talk about things that he has done.  Even though he often says to me or Stuart “let’s talk about school”, he won’t talk much or answer our questions about his friends or teachers.  Today I tried to stimulate him to talk, I said “Let’s talk about school or let’s talk about the cruise?”  Logan answered “Let’s talk about nothing”.

Day 5 – Cabo San Lucas

We started the day with Characters Breakfast at Parrot Cay.  Several Disney characters were visiting the dining hall, coming to each table to say hello and we got to take pictures with them.  Logan and Connor both enjoyed seeing the characters but were a bit reserved when getting close to them.  The ship arrived at Cabo in the late morning;  because of the timing, we did not sign up for any excursion for the day. We ended up spending the day on our own as our friends wanted to go on shore at noon and we rather do that later.  We walked around in the ship in the morning, played some ping pong, and then went for some swimming.  It was a very nice day to stay in as many people had disembarked and places were less crowded.  Before we went swimming, I decided to give Connor 1/2 tablet of Dramamine as he still was not eating much, and more needy than usual.  It was definitely not easy to give a tablet to a baby.  We hung out at the goofy pool this time; Logan and I had fun floating around together.  Stuart was carrying Connor around that Connor ended up falling asleep on him (maybe the effect of Dramamine).  Stuart enjoyed the hour of relaxing time on the lounge chair while Connor laid on his chest.  After swimming, we had our lunch at the pool side while watching “The Incredibles” on the big screen.  We woke up from nap at 4pm, and decided to take the tender boat for a quick trip to the pier.  At that time, not too many people were disembarking, so we had our own private boat.  The kids loved the boat ride even though it was a bit rocky.  We did a quick walk around the shops and took the boat ride back to get ready for dinner.  It was a pirate theme dinner at Parrot Cay, but at our table, only Mckayla was dressed for the event as Tinker Bell.  The daddies ended up wearing the pirates bandanas.  This was the first dinner where Connor actually ate quite a bit of pasta on his own.  There was a big pirate deck party and fireworks at 10:30pm, but due to the timing, we decided to opt out on that.  We played at the clubhouse for awhile before calling the night.  Our friends stayed up to enjoy the great show. 

Day 6 – Cabo San Lucas

We had an excursion to a beach resort at 8:45am, so we got ready right after breakfast. But this trip took longer before we got to the destination (ie.tender boat and bus ride), we were only given 3 hours at the hotel.  The water in the big beautiful pool was quite cold, so we all moved to the kid pool to play instead.  We then migrated to the beach as Logan wanted to play with sands; the sands was a lot more coarse there.  We were warned that there was no swimming in the ocean due to variable tides at Cabos.  We just played at the edge of the water and had fun jumping over the waves.  While we were playing at the beach, Cary and Phil decided to take their boys for a jet ski ride and had a blast.  We went back to play at the kid pool again, then had a Mexican buffet lunch at noon.  Afterward, both Connor and Marcus took a quick nap on their daddies before returning to the ship.  With all the transportation, we barely made it back to the ship on time.  After a long nap, it was time to get ready for semi-formal night.  By this night, Connor (and I think Marcus too) had become more restless at dinner time; he would point to the entrance way as soon as we were seated at the table.  So often Stuart had to take Connor out for a walk before our food arrived.  Our head server had the chef made us a plate of seafood fried rice which was quite delicious, and Connor once again had some appetite for that.  After dinner, we got ready for another theater show, Disney Dreams: the Enchanted Classics.  This was another great show featuring Peter Pan and many wonderful songs and dancing.  Connor enjoyed it, but his attention had gotten shorter that Stuart had to take him out of the theater before the show ended.  Logan and I stayed to enjoy the rest of the show.  By then, we were more used to staying up that we took the kids to the kid club for a brief play before calling the night.

Day 7 – At Sea

This was not a very pleasant day as the weather changed dramatically.  It was freezing cold in the morning when we went for breakfast.  It was too cold to do anything on the decks, so we just hung out at the clubhouse.  Connor was becoming quite clingy and needy that I decided to sign him up for the nursery so I could have some times to myself and to pack.  At lunchtime we did bundle up to have lunch at the deck while watching “Monster Inc.” on the big screen.  We really enjoyed a cup of hot cocoa during lunch.  We all took a long nap.  During the nap, we could tell that the waves were getting stronger.  Connor was cheerful after nap, but due to the big waves, I gave him another dose of Dramamine before taking him to the nursery.  He cried immediately when I handed him off, but he stopped after only 10 seconds as he was shown with all the toys in the room.  So I felt better to return to our room myself.  As I approached our room, I heard Logan crying.  Apparently, he did not feel well after nap, and he threw up all his lunch and was placed in the tub while Stuart tried to clean up.  Poor Logan was so uncomfortable.  I finally rushed him out of the room as soon as we changed him since the seasickness felt worse inside the room.  We stopped by the nursery to peek at Connor who was sitting and watching the other kids , then we went to the movie theater to watch the 2nd half of Snow White.  Logan was feeling better by then and enjoyed the show with me.  Stuart and I took turns doing some packing.  While doing packing, we definitely felt the waves, so we both double medicated with Dramamine and scopolamine.  We picked up Connor from the nursery after he had been there for an hour and a half; he was quite cheerful and was showing me a couple of toys there before asking to be picked up.  We then headed to our last dinner at Animator’s Palate.  Phil and Uno were apparently suffering from seasick as well and did not come join us for dinner.  Stuart and I both felt less dizzy by then, so we could enjoy the dinner.  Connor also ate some pastas and Logan enjoyed his last Mickey ice cream bar at the end of dinner.  Afterward, we headed over to watch the last theater show, “Remember the Magic: The Final Farewell”.  This show was wonderful, but there was a segment with a comedian juggler that both Logan and Connor found it too slow while I enjoyed his jokes.  The show ended with a farewell finale with many of the characters coming out to sing and dance.  Logan definitely enjoyed it.  After the great show, we decided to let the kids play at the clubhouse for the last time.  Despite the seasickness, it still wrapped up into another good final day.

Day 8 – Disembarking

We ended up sleeping in a bit and had to rush to finish packing before heading to breakfast at 7:15am.  It was the final big breakfast and we said our farewell to our fellow cruise companions or “the friends” as Logan referred to everyone, and to our servers.  We waited at the restaurant til our group were called to disembark; the process went smoothly.  We were at grandparents’ house by 10am.  We spent the rest of the day relaxing and letting the kids play with the grandparents.  It took us awhile for our bodies to get used to being on land again and it took me some times to accept that the vacation was ending soon and we had to return to our routine.  We tried to be very careful during the entire cruise about washing hands and using antiseptic wipes, but Connor ended up still getting sick, he started coughing on that day. 

Day 9 – Heading home

After waking up early in the morning, we decided to drive home in mid morning so that we could be home before dark and before dinner.  After playing with grandparents in the morning and saying farewell, we started our long drive home.  The boys were calm, until shortly after our first stop.  Connor became uncomfortable and started to cry non stop for 20mins.  We made another stop so I could give him a dose of Tylenol.  He continued to cry another 10minutes after we resumed driving, and he finally felt asleep for the rest of the trip.  Both boys were excited to walk around in the front yard as soon as we arrived home.  Scottie was happy to see us and to get out of the house too.

     Now vacation is over and we are back to routine.  Logan has returned to school since yesterday.  Connor’s cough and runny nose have been bad the past 2 days, so I decided to stay home with him to allow him time to get better and to avoid spreading the germs to school.  Hope he would return to school tomorrow.

     Our highly anticipated vacation finally came and we had a wonderful time.  We now have lots of fond memories and 400+ pictures to remember it by.   Here are the highlights (photos).

Day 0 – Driving

We started our drive down to southern CA a bit later than planned.  Michelle and Ted were already on the road, and they were around 20-30 minutes ahead of us.  The drive was uneventful, and we stopped once for lunch.  Both families arrived at our own destinations in good time (5+ hours of driving).  For us, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening hanging out with grandparents.  Logan was looking forward in seeing them, and so he was very excited to start playing with grandma as soon as we arrived.  Connor was shy as usual, but did enjoy receiving lots of attention.  They had a great time playing with all the toys grandma had prepared for them.

Day 1 – Boarding

The next morning, our plan was to hang out with the grandparents, have lunch and take a nap before boarding the ship.  The plan went well.  We drove to the port at 2:30pm, and the boarding went smoothly.  We found our room and met up with the Kaos who had already settled in in the room next to us.  Marcus was taking a nap, and so Mckayla came to our room to play with us.  All the kids were so excited to start this vacation that they were giggling with each other.   After a quick safety drill at 4pm, we went up to the deck for a welcoming party.  We then stopped by to check out the Oceaneer Club (a kid club) which had some little climbing structures, a stage for group activities, some building blocks, hula hoops, a large pirate climbing stair/structure, and a computer room with games and a large coloring table.  Logan’s favorite was playing with the computer games while Connor just loved walking everywhere in the entire club.  The cruise started to sail and it was time (5:45pm) for dinner.  Every night, we were being assigned to one of the three dining halls for dinner to give us varieties of atmosphere and food.  Our first dinner was at the Parrot Cay where we met up with our other cruising companions, Cary, Aiden, Phil and Uno; they are friends with Michelle and Ted.  We ordered foods for the kids first, then ours, and shortly after, the servers started bringing us tons of food.  First, some appetizers for us, second, multiple plates of the entrees we ordered for the kids, and then finally the entrees for the adults.  There were plenty of foods to eat and they were delicious.   After dinner, of course, we had some yummy desserts, and the kids were also given special treat, the Mickey ice cream bars.  Logan was so happy to see the bar for the first night that he ate the whole thing with a big smile.  This marked the beginning of a week long feast.  After we were all stuffed, we decided to do some dancing in the lounge with live music while the kids were in their sugar highs.  Mckayla, Marcus and Aiden immediately started dancing.  Logan warmed up to it quickly too; Connor was excited and loved to walk into the middle of the dance floor as well.  Uno was a bit shy and decided to stay with his daddy instead.  We danced until the live singers ended the show.  The four of us decided to call it a night and returned to our room.  The room had a good layout; Connor had a crib to sleep in and Logan slept on a single pulled out bed with a railing.  Stuart and I had a queen size bed.  We all slept well after the first day of excitement on the cruise.

Day 2 – At Sea

After breakfast, we walked around to check out the amenities on the ship.  We found the sport facilities on the upper deck.  Stuart and I tried to play some ping pong while Logan played the foo ball by himself.  Connor was just happy walking around and watching us.  We then played some soccer briefly before deciding to go hang out at the pools.  Stuart and Logan went into the Mickey pool while Connor, being on diapers, was only allowed at the splash zone.  Connor watched the kids running and splashing but he did not want to touch the water himself.  He then lost interests after a little bit.  The weather was still cool, so Stuart and Logan did not stay long in the water either.  After drying up, Stuart wanted to show Logan the arcade and at that point, Connor appeared tired, so I took him back to the room for a nap.  We had a buffet lunch afterward.  We then went to watch the movie Cars 2, but since Connor’s attention span was short, he and I ended up taking a long walk in different part of the ship.  It was was Halloween that day, so after the family nap, we dressed up the kids in their costumes and followed everyone for trick n treat.  We only stopped by a couple of stations as Logan was still not very into this activity yet.  There were some very elaborate costumes and we saw a couple other sets of Luke Skywalker and Yoda too.  We had dinner at Triton that night.  Since day 1, Connor’s appetite had gone way down, he basically only wanted to eat fruits and few bites of bread, drink only minimal water and barely any milk.  It might have been the change in routine or as Michelle suggested that he might have been seasick.  So dinner was a bit frustrating trying to get Connor to eat.  Logan on the other hand was enjoying dinners, eating mostly fish and rice; however he wanted to be fed by Stuart rather than eating by himself like his friends Mckayla, Aiden and Uno.  After dinner, we went for another dancing event at Studio Sea to wrap up the evening.  A side note of the day was that Logan was uncooperative at times which was somewhat tiring for us to deal with.  Glad that the bad behavior lasted less than 48 hours.

Day 3 – At Sea

It was Mckayla’s birthday.  From the start of the day, she was so happy wearing a birthday pin and receiving birthday wishes.  We tried to go a clubhouse party after breakfast, but it did not turn out as exciting as we thought, so Stuart took Logan to see the movie “Peter Pan” while Connor and I went to hang out at the pools with the Kaos.  The weather was much warmer that day, therefore, it was a lot more pleasant hanging out on the deck.  Connor played at the splash zone with Marcus for a little bit; Connor was mostly touching the water while holding onto my leg, and watching Marcus having a great time splashing with water.  In the afternoon, we went to play at the clubhouse before it was time to get dressed up for the formal night.  We told Logan that we were dressing up for Mckayla’s birthday which he was willing to cooperate.  Everyone in our group looked so handsome and beautiful; the kids were just amazing.  Mckayla was in a pretty white dress while all the boys dressed in black and white, like a group of handsome waiters.  It was another good dinner at the Triton’s (Connor was still not eating much) and we sang a birthday song for Mckayla.  We went to watch our first theater show at 8:30pm, “The Golden Mickeys”.  It was a very good show of many popular Disney songs.  Logan loved it so much that he kept asking “More show?” after each closing of the curtains.  Connor also was mesmerized with all the singing and dancing.  He would clap whenever everyone clapped and he giggled a couple of times on his own.  He surely was playing attention as he pointed to his head to me to indicate the hats that Woody and Jessie were wearing.  They both sat contently for the entire 45 minutes of show.  It was a great night.

Day 4 – Puerta Vallarta

We had signed up for an excursion to a beach resort at Puerta Vallarta, so we all gathered at 9:45am after breakfast.  We embarked the ship and took a 20minutes bus ride to a beautiful hotel.  Our friends rode in an earlier bus, so we met up at the beach with them and settled down at the cabana that they saved for us.  It was a beautiful beach with many cabanas and lounge chairs.  We were so excited that we immediately got ready to go to the water.  The sand was very fine, and the water was nicely warm.  Uno, Aiden and Logan played with the sands by the water for a long time while Mckayla sat nicely at the cabana to have her hairs braided by one of the vendors.  Marcus and Connor were hanging with the mommies, and the daddies had a chance to go out to the water for a swim.  Everyone also enjoyed free drinks at the hotel.  Connor finally got tired and took a power nap on me while I relaxed under the cabana.  The kids slowly migrated to the beautiful pool which had 2 huge alligator water slides.  After Connor woke up, we all headed over to have a Mexican buffet lunch at the resort.  We returned to the pool for more swimming before wrapping up the 4 hour stay at this wonderful resort.  Most of us were able to keep the kids up during the bus ride so we could have a nice long nap at the ship.  After dinner at the Animator’s Palate, it was time for our 2nd theater show, The Toy Story Musical.  This show was one hour long.  Logan and Connor were fascinated by all the characters initially, but the music was not as catchy and there were quite a bit of solo singing.  So after 45 minutes, Connor became antsy that he and I ended up walking around outside the theater until Logan and Daddy finished the show.