Your Cruise Director Mushy

I seem to start a lot of blog posts this way, but once again I have been so behind on blogging! This month has been crazy busy and I have a lot to post, but not enough time to actually type it all up!. So I am thinking that the December posts are going to be in nonsequential order,which doesn't bother me, but probably will drive some of you crazy, especially if you are slightly OCD like my oldest son.

Anyway, we haven't had time to blog this past week because we were on a cruise! I think I am going to have to break it into cruise post subcategories to keep it from being forever long, so this will be the first! We were so excited to go on a cruise with my grandparents to celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary! They took the entire family five years ago for their 50th, but Matt and I couldn't go because I was too far along in a high risk pregnancy with a certain boy who loves space (I was also unknowingly pregnant with a grown man named Kenny, which now that I think about it, probably contributed greatly to the high risk-ness). So now we had the chance to go and take the boys, which was very exciting and also extremely terrifying. We have never been on a real vacation before that didn't consist of staying with family members and having Super Target within walking distance. But we got it together and headed out for a "short" five hour road trip to Galveston. We woke up Thursday morning ready to board the ship. We were also cruising with my in-laws and Uncle Aaron and Uncle Jack plus Memom and Dedad. So all in all we were and odd, but fun cast of characters. The boys were so excited to see how giant the ship was and had no problem making themselves at home. In fact, home is a great word for this situation because that is how Hudson acted, like he was coming home. He took to the cruise ship like a duck to water and wasted no time making friends.

Since he knows no fear at all, his parents were forced to take on the extraneous fear that he should be feeling, in the form of heart stopping panic every time he came near a deck railing since, naturally, he is still tiny enough to squeeze himself through and possibly plummet into the ocean below. Now here is the thing about cruise ships, we think they are tons of fun, but they are also kind of cheesy. Okay, really cheesy. And here is the thing about my kids, they are also really cheesy. Can you see why they all got on so well? Especially the Mush, as he is king of the cheesy. Once he laid eyes on all that shiny brass and smily people, he lit up like a Christmas tree. He became quite the hit with the staff, high fiving people right and left and announcing, "I Hudson!" as he strutted through the hallways. Every night at dinner, the wait staff was forced into an almost painful song and dance routine and Hudson began to really look forward to this part of dinner. In fact, it became part of our bargaining for behavior routine, if he didn't flip out during the really long appetizer and main courses, he would be able to join the staff for their dance before dessert. And dance he did. Every night all the waiters would weave in a line around the tables and the maitre d' would announce that they were representing 40 different countries......and representing the United States, dancing to Flo-Rida's Get Low, one very short two year old.


Music is everywhere on a cruise ship and Hudson was like a little praire dog. He would catch a few notes from across the ship in a random lounge and his head would pop up on alert and he would start to dance and it was our job to get him as close to the source as possible. It was a little exhausting but he had the time of his life. Hudson also became like a little celebrity on the ship, he and Connor spent some time every day in Camp Carnival (for kids ages 2-5) and after the first day all of the workers knew Hudson by name, which I am sure was a good thing. The last night, the kids got the chance to take part in the chorus' holiday show on the main stage and since they were the youngest kids, their role consisted on putting decorations on the tree while there was singing and dancing. Hudson ranked high enough to get his own handler, a sweet lady, whose only job that night was apparently to attend to Hudson and make sure he didn't take over the show. I almost hesitated to put him in it though, because I was (and still am) afraid that once he gets a taste of the stage, we might lose him forever. It was really cute though. Speaking of handlers, he also had his own at the water slide! They had a really great baby slide that Hudson absolutely loved and there was an attendant there to keep an eye on things, but it quickly became clear that his job description shifted to focus entirely on Mushy. Hudson likes to scare the bejeebus out of people with his fearless antics and I started to really feel sorry for that man. Hudson is a sly little devil and as soon as the attendant (Ahmed from the Phillipines) reminded him to sit on his bottom, he would blink and Hudson would dive down head first. During Hudson's second time out (out of many), Ahmed came over and said, " I just so scared, he so cute but he scare me." Great, so now we are going to have a reputation in the Phillipines.

I told Matt, as the cruise came to an end that we are really going to have to keep a tight leash on that boy or before we turn around he will have run off and signed up for a tour on a cruise ship and then we will never see him again. He had that good of a time. He greeted people as if he worked there and high fived more complete strangers than was sanitary. I added two videos of a little of Hudson's interaction at dinner. I especially like the part where he starts yelling out, "Thank you!" like all the hundreds of people in that dining room are cheering for him. Well our table was