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Gabe and I had come to several conclusions about co-sleeping, night nursing, and sleep in general. We felt like night weaning was necessary, but we didn’t want to make any changes before our cruise in May. We decided to take on the challenge during the first free weekend that we had after the cruise.

After several weeks of the new routine, things are looking quite promising. If you’re a regular reader, you should be well aware that Maddie is not the best sleeper. Up until recently, I have pretty much posted as a separate post each time that she has slept more than 6 hours in the past year! Let’s just say that these posts have in no way cluttered up the blog.

The first week of night weaning was rough. I had done quite a bit of reading on the subject, and one of the suggestions is to remove Mommy from the nighttime equation. Dr. Sears was one who makes this recommendation. So, I slept on the couch for that first week (and maybe almost one more week after that).

The first night involved quite a bit of loud crying when she awoke as usual at 11pm. We weren’t going to fight the co-sleeping battle at the same time (not to mention that the co-sleeping isn’t an issue exactly…the NOT sleeping is our issue. The constant nursing has recently been a bit of a problem as well.). Gabe would bring Maddie to the bed as usual, but I was unavailable. Maddie was not thrilled about this, and she cried and cried for Mommy. It was difficult for all of us since I was not far away in the other room. Gabe was finally able to get her back to sleep, and she woke several times throughout the night looking for me and crying about it. I joined the family in the bed at around 6am, which is a suitable time for nursing. Maddie nursed quite a bit at this point.

The next night, I was on the couch again and Maddie cried a little less when Daddy brought her to bed. I had my first night terror in a LONG time and was convinced that the couch was an unsafe place to continue my night (I couldn’t convince myself that the big spider that I saw wasn’t in my imagination, though I’m almost sure that it was). I went to the bed, and a little while later I had another night terror. This time I was pretty sure that the same (or similar) spider crawled over Maddie onto Gabe. I have no idea how I was able to convince myself that it was a night terror and my imagination and NOT REAL. But I did, despite the fact that I thought it entirely possible that the spider had gotten trapped in my hair and followed me to the bed. I tried to push that thought away in my head and went back to sleep.

Maddie woke up several times, and it was rough to deny her requests to nurse. She cried a lot. I tried to comfort her in other ways. I told her that we would nurse when the sun comes up. I held her off until the light came through the windows. Things went a lot smoother when I was on the couch. She was upset the previous night, but not as upset as she was when I was there and I denied her requests to nurse! Oh, and on top of the two night terrors, I dreamed that the whole family was in a plane crash (fortunately, we somehow survived as we crashed on water and we were trying to figure out how to get off of the plane and into the rafts). Can you say stressful!?

Maddie nursed a lot at 6am, and she also nursed more than usual during the day on both Saturday and Sunday (we started on Friday night).

The third night, Gabe and I went to a movie while Aunt Kristin babysat. We were shocked when we came home and found Kristin in the living room without Maddie! When Kristin took her to her room, Maddie requested to be put in the crib. Kristin patted Maddie for a few minutes, and she went to sleep. We were even more shocked when she didn’t wake for almost 6 hours!!! She had not done that in ages. I slept on the couch, and Maddie didn’t even cry when Gabe took her to the bed. We were starting to see definite progress, but we weren’t ready to get our hopes up just yet. Once again, I joined the bed at 6am and Maddie nursed a lot.

We encountered some setbacks over the next few nights as our efforts were poorly timed. She FINALLY cut her 3rd tooth and seems like she may be getting the 4th at any moment. A few nights were rough due to the teething, presumably.

After those few awful days, we got into a routine. Maddie was fairly easily soothed by Daddy when waking up and coming to the bed. At first, she woke up in the crib and was ready for our bed around the same time as usual, shortly before midnight. She threw in a few 5 and 6 hour stretches for good measure and even a few 7 hour stretches. Things have certainly been improving. About two weeks into the night weaning, she slept a miraculous 10 hours straight! She has not repeated this feat, but we finally have hope.

Aside from last week’s midweek fever and ear infection (awful, awful nights), her worst nights have involved a 5 hour stretch of sleep. This may not sound like much to many of you, but for Maddie this is huge. She’s added more 7 hour stretches to her record. Sometimes, we have to go upstairs and pat her once or twice to get her back to sleep, but this was something that wasn’t even possible two months ago. Usually if she woke up, she would not accept any answer except “take me to your bed.” Attempting to pat her back to sleep and get her back into the crib resulted in a Maddie who wanted to stay awake for two hours. It typically wasn’t worth the risk.

She has been difficult to get to sleep initially on many nights. For example, as I am writing this Gabe is upstairs putting Maddie to bed, and she is protesting (I’ll likely schedule this to post on a different day as I usually do!). She’s very tired and needs her sleep, but she fights it very hard!

She doesn’t ask to nurse when she gets into the bed, and I’m able to sleep in my bed all night (hooray!). She sometimes wants to be very, very close to me (even laying on my chest like she did when she was a newborn), especially when she’s sick. Other times, she doesn’t even seem to know that I’m there! I’m not complaining one bit about the co-sleeping. I know I’ll miss it when she sleeps the entire night in her crib, but I’m not going to complain either. For now, I’m happy to get some extra sleep and my morning snuggles. It’s a very sweet compromise.

We felt we had an early start to the day. We didn’t set any alarms, but of course Maddie wanted us to get up bright and early at 7am. So, we took our time getting ready and headed to breakfast in the dining room. We decided to go to the playgroup at 9am which is the time slot for the 6-18 month age group. When we got to the playgroup, we were informed that we were NOT supposed to turn our clocks back the previous night as we had and it was really 10am. Oops. It didn’t seem to matter as the only other child that showed up was in Maddie’s age group. Maddie seemed to enjoy playing with the Little People (familiar to her with all the ones she has at home!). She didn’t cling to me the entire time like she did with the first playgroup.

While Maddie and I were at the playgroup, Daddy went to the casino to play some video poker. I knew that things must not have gone well when he returned after not being gone too long! After the playgroup, I wanted to play a round of Bingo. They have this crazy newfangled device that tracks 30 cards at once. It plays for you! I thought that sort of took the fun out of the game, but the value was good. At least they gave you some bonus cards you could punch manually. I didn’t win anything, but I did get to stand on the last card (one away). So close!

After Bingo, it was about time for lunch. We had lunch in the dining room, as usual, and discovered that you actually have to tell the waiter if you’re interested in Brasserie 30. We thought that the lunch in the dining room was always the special “Brasserie 30″ service – a “quick” 30-minute lunch. We always complained a little to each other that the lunch seemed to take more like an hour. Apparently, if you tell them that you want the quick lunch, they pretty much get your lunch to you in less than 30 minutes. This is great with a squirmy, impatient toddler!

After lunch always means naptime! We strolled Maddie around Deck 5 until she fell asleep. Then we took turns reading on the deck with her and playing video poker in the casino. Gabe won back the money that he lost earlier in the day (and then I lost about the same amount) by hitting four Queens.

The ocean provided GREAT white noise. Maddie has a white noise machine at home that helps her sleep, so the decks of the ship were a great substitute. It was a bit windy and chilly, so we decided to go inside after a little while. Unfortunately, the art auction was going on in the Centrum, and the gavel woke up Maddie.

We tried to stroll around Deck 10, but she didn’t get back to sleep after that. We were very concerned about what that would mean for dinner that night.

Since she wasn’t interested in continuing her nap, we let her run around the decks for a bit. She loved it, of course, since it continued to be her favorite thing to do on the trip. We then headed to the Solarium for a snack. They had some sort of Mexican pizza that wasn’t all that great. We overheard someone talking about TV Tune trivia which reminded us that it was about to start. We headed to the lounge to participate. The cruise director and his wife ran the game, and it was almost exactly the same as the one on our last cruise (including the cruise director’s wife doing her best Flipper impression). Oh well, it was still fun to play and to watch people acting out the various shows for bonus points.

We headed to the Crayola Beginnings art session before dinner where most of us tried to keep our toddlers from ingesting markers and paint. I kept trying to take the markers away from Maddie, but somehow she kept finding more. At one point, I snapped at Gabe for letting her have a marker only to find that the instructor had given Maddie the marker. Oops. Oh well, she should know that markers and one year olds don’t really mix.

We went back to the room and packed some more of our stuff since we needed to have our suitcases outside of the room by 11pm. Dinner service was slower than usual tonight, and Maddie did not make it very long. Gabe and I took turns entertaining her while the other ate and socialized with our new friends. I got a photo of our waitstaff, but I have no idea what their names were since we missed the first night of introductions. We exchanged contact information with our tablemates. The waitstaff sang another song together, but they had quite a few technical difficulties with the back up music. They finally just sang without the music.

After dinner, we headed back to the 10th deck to see the sunset. We were determined to be there at the right time this time!

We had plenty of time, and not very many people were there to see the sunset. We always felt like the ship had plenty of places to explore and it was easy to find a secluded spot to relax.

Maddie had a great time. I love the determined look on her face in this photo.

She’s such a cutie!

Two separate groups of people came up to the 10th deck since conditions were allegedly perfect to witness a green flash. We waited patiently and looked for it (while taking a ton of continuously shot photos), but it didn’t happen.

The sunset was quite pretty, anyway! It’s neat to see the sun setting on a flat horizon.

We went back to the room to finish our packing and get Maddie into her jammies. We were greeted by a towel elephant and the rest of our stuffed animals, including Maddie’s new octopus that she received for being a part of the Royal Babies program.

Gabe put Maddie in the sling, and we walked around the ship so Maddie would fall asleep. It was Gabe’s turn to play poker, but since the table was getting full, he let me play for about an hour while he put Maddie to bed. I should have skipped it as it wasn’t a good session for me! A few bad hands had me losing most of my buy-in. I went back to the room where Maddie was now peacefully sleeping in the pack-n-play, and Gabe went to play for several hours. he didn’t do too well either and “cashed out the easy way.” Oh well! We had a great time playing poker on the cruise. It was a treat to actually get to play live poker again, even if it wasn’t the best playing conditions.

Since I discovered Propel’s new formula contains hfcs, I have not been buying it. Considering how much of it I drank in the past, I really missed it. I decided to try the powder packets. They are tasty, and of course they do not contain hfcs. I’m happy.

Another challenge has been finding a good marinade. Our favorite marinade contained hfcs, so we have been searching for another. We liked the Paul Newman marinades ok, though they weren’t quite as flavorable as our old favorite. Recently, we discovered McCormick Grill Mates marinades which come in the form of powder packets. These are very tasty! The flavors really stick to the meat and only take 15 minutes to marinade. I like my marinades to have a strong flavor, and these definitely fit the bill. Yum!

Others writing The Sunday Somethings: Audrey

Something that made me smile this week: Maddie always does so many things that make me smile, even during a week when she was sick and cranky. Friday, the Itty Bitty Beach Party made me smile. It was so cute seeing Maddie and her buddy Keira together, plus Maddie LOVED playing in the water! She was so excited.

Something I’m thinking: How do people manage multiple kids who get sick as often as Maddie has been sick?? I feel like Gabe and I have to miss quite a bit of work to take care of her, and we just have one kid.

Something I am hoping: I’m hoping that somehow Gabe and I can both play in our poker game this week! Someone will have to tend to Maddie until she goes to bed, so this might not be a possibility.

Something happening around the house: As usual, it’s a big mess. I guess we better get things cleaned up before poker on Wednesday.

Something I’m reading: I did a good bit of reading this week, though they were all pretty easy reads. I finished Can You Keep a Secret by Sophie Kinsella, which I had barely started while in Davidson last weekend. I started and finished Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret for June’s book club. Can you believe I never read it as a kid? I wish that I had so I could compare my thoughts on the book. I started and finished Picking Cotton for July’s book club. I also started Kira-Kira which I’ve had checked out from the library for a little while now. It’s on the Newbury Award Winners list as part of my reading goals.

Something tasty I ate this week: I haven’t actually eaten it yet, but I’m looking forward to the pot roast that has been simmering in the slow cooker all day. We are using veggies from this week’s Produce Box.

Something Maddie did this week: Maddie slept an amazing 10 consecutive hours last Sunday night. As for the rest of the week, she had a fever for several days and likely had a painful ear infection for 3-4 days as well. Most nights, she spent over 5 hours in the crib with one 7 hour night and one 8 hour night. Her ‘bad’ nights are now about 5 hours which indicates considerable progress! Dare I say we have hope??

Something I struggled with this week: We did struggle with Maddie getting sick this week. We took her to the doctor on Tuesday for a fever and were given no explanation. She was diagnosed with an ear infection on Friday after an absolutely miserable night (but no fever). We knew something was wrong, and I’m glad we took her to the doctor! We felt like she had the ear infection on Tuesday as the intern thought she saw something. It’s frustrating to think that we could have started her on the antibiotic much earlier and avoided extra pain for our little girl.

Something I’m doing towards my goals: We watched two episodes of Dollhouse earlier this week, though we would have watched more. While Maddie was sleeping longer, she was increasingly more difficult to put to bed. She didn’t allow us much time between her bedtime and our bedtime to watch anything. I also was able to mark Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret off of the Best 100 books list and started Kira-Kira which is on the Newbury Award winners list. I also managed to finish both of my 2008 photobooks in time to take advantage of several Shutterfly sales and offers. Woohoo!

Something I learned this week: I learned how to geocache! Our division did a geocaching team building event.

Something I’m looking forward to next week: I’m looking forward to our poker game and our trip to Cincinnati.

Something random: Maddie’s favorite book right now is Alaska’s ABC Bears, a gift from Grandma and Grandpa from their Alaskan cruise.

Something I captured: Keira is giving Maddie a loving, gentle pat on the shoulder. They are too cute together.

Or maybe a fluke…

Last night, for the first time EVER, Maddie slept a miraculous 10 hours. The most that she’s ever slept was 7 hours, and it’s been a while since that has happened. In fact, she hasn’t slept more than 6 consecutive hours in probably a year, maybe longer. She’s only slept 6 hours (or almost 6 hours) straight twice this year – once in January and once about a week ago when Kristin put her to bed while we were at a movie.

Maddie slept in her crib from 8pm until a little after 6am. If she did that every night, I’d be a happy Mommy! Unfortunately, Gabe and I didn’t sleep as well as we might have liked. He checked on her several times, and I was on the couch which is certainly not as comfy as the bed. I think tonight we’ll go to bed at 10pm and hope for the best!

Others writing The Sunday Somethings: Audrey

Something that made me smile this week: Watching Maddie show off for her grandparents this weekend. She performed many of her tricks.

Something I’m thinking: I probably should have taken more photos this weekend in Davidson. For some reason, I rarely take too many photos when visiting at my parents house. I don’t think we got any that weren’t of just Maddie.

Something I am hoping: To finish my 2008 photobooks this week.

Something happening around the house: Earlier this week, we battled with ants in the kitchen. Ugh, I hate finding that first ant knowing that more are to come. I think we got them under control quickly.

Something I’m reading: I was very busy with photobooks this week. I actually managed to start and finish the Bermuda Cruise book. I had started my 2008 photobooks a while back, and I finished Volume 1 this week and hope to finish Volume 2 in the upcoming week. 2008 was a big year. I didn’t do much reading aside from proofing my photobooks.

Something tasty I ate this week: My parents cooked us a tasty dinner in Davidson. My favorite dish was probably the squash casserole. Maybe I’ll make it with our Produce Box this week. Gabe’s favorite was Mom’s homemade pound cake. It was quite yummy with fresh strawberries.

Something Maddie did this week: She finally got her third (and possibly 4th) tooth! Her top two front teeth are coming in now. They seem to be causing her some discomfort.

Something I struggled with this week: We have been continuing our night weaning adventures. Sleep has been very difficult on some nights. We have been seeing improvement as Gabe has been able to get her back to sleep quickly with few tears in the past few nights. The next challenge will be to add Mommy back to the equation. She may not be so happy when I’m right there and she can’t nurse. Teething caused some midweek issues with the night weaning.

Something I’m doing towards my goals: We had our first will appointment this week. We should have that finalized in the next few weeks.

Something I learned this week: That a few tentative family travel plans have been canceled.

Something I’m looking forward to next week: I’m looking forward to taking Maddie to the pool for the Itty Bitty Beach Party.

Something random: Runts candy has been through numerous changes over the years, but the nasty banana flavor has remained constant. I can pretty much tolerate all of the other flavors, but I refuse to eat those bananas.

Something I captured: Maddie fell asleep on the way to Davidson, not long after we got into the car. She slept the majority of the way. She didn’t sleep much at all on the way back home, but she was happy, so I’m not complaining.

We had to wait in a little bit of a line to get back onto the ship. It didn’t take too long. Once we were back on the ship, we took our showers and changed into our dinner clothes (though we had plenty of time until dinner). We gave Maddie another bath in the shower, and she hated it, again. We definitely like to bathe her on the days that we put sunscreen on her.

Since Maddie did not nap for too long earlier in the day, we put her in the stroller and tried to get her to nap some more before dinner. We walked around the ship quite a bit as we left the port and watched our last few views of Kings Wharf and other parts of Bermuda.

Our time in Bermuda was so short, but we were happy with what we were able to see. If we had another day, we would have visited Hamilton. We might have collected some sea glass. Several others from our Cruise Critic board talked about the glass that they collected, and it sounded neat.

We walked a ton during our trip. Maddie loves the stroller, but she also requires you to keep moving. We enjoyed strolling on the 5th deck since we could make a complete loop most days and it was shaded. The only problem with Deck 5 is that it could be quite windy when we were at sea! Deck 10 also had a loop (which is about a quarter mile, who knows how many times we completed that loop and the one on Deck 5 which is longer!).

After we took in the sail away views, we headed to Rock ‘n Roll Name That Tune trivia. We had a pretty good idea that the songs were all going to be from the 50s and 60s. Unfortunately, this was the case. In fact, we’re almost positive that the songs were identical to the ones that we had on the last cruise. The repeat performances that we experienced on the cruise were disappointing. The good part is that we didn’t feel like we were missing much when Maddie prevented us from participating in an activity! Maddie woke up during the trivia game, and we headed to the Solarium for a snack. They always had hamburgers, pizza, and fries in the Solarium.

Between trivia and dinner, we let Maddie run around the decks and walk down the hallways. She had a great time and continued to make friends everywhere she went. Nobody ever called her a boy when she was walking around in a dress, but we got it frequently when she was in her stroller and it didn’t seem to matter what she was wearing.

We had the best dinner on the cruise this night, perhaps because she had a nap closer to dinnertime. She was entertained with stickers, Touchy Feely books, and crayons. She made it more than halfway through the entree. This was the only night that Annabelle didn’t make it through the entire meal. Funny that Maddie’s best day was Annabelle’s worst (though I must say that Annabelle was still content to be at the table, she just didn’t want to sit in her high chair).

After dinner, we went to see the sunset and had just missed it again. Maddie didn’t care, she had the most fun of the cruise running around on the decks and shrieking. This was definitely one of my favorite memories from the cruise. She was so happy! A couple of older kids were playing on the decks, and she thought they were hilarious.

We took some video and a bunch of photos. Maddie had the time of her life.

After playing on the deck for a bit, we headed back to the room to change Maddie into her pajamas and put her into the carrier. We tried to go to the show, but Maddie wasn’t quite ready to sleep and started to get fussy. Gabe walked Maddie around until she slept and urged me to start playing poker. The last night that he played, he had to wait at least 30 minutes for a spot at the table. Since only one spot was left after we cut through the casino, I sat down and started playing.

Maddie fell asleep soon afterward, and Gabe was able to successfully transfer her to the pack-n-play. He did some reading while I was playing poker. A house phone was just a few steps away from the poker table, so I checked in with Gabe to ensure that Maddie was still sleeping every 30 minutes or so.

I had a great night playing poker and ended up profiting $229. Not too shabby! I was thrilled. I plan to write more about my poker experiences in a separate post, as I mentioned previously.

While I was in the casino, I took advantage of the deal that allowed $30 in chips for $20. The cashier claimed that I could use the chips at the poker table, but I wasn’t surprised when the dealer said that they were invalid. I ended up using half of it on the roulette table and the other half on the craps table. I really enjoyed playing the other table games! It didn’t hurt that I made money doing it, about $40 total profit. Overall, I ended up with about $260 in profit (after I blew $10 on a random slot machine). Maddie was still sleeping when I got back, and Gabe was excited about all of my profits!

I’ve updated the photo calendar for February, March, April, and the first half or so of May. Whew! I was really behind on that project. You can see that shortly after Maddie’s first birthday, we stopped taking a photo for every day…though I am sure we still take more than enough for most people.

Continuing with our second day in Bermuda, we got off the bus at Gibbs Hill Lighthouse. Since the lighthouse is so close to Horseshoe Bay Beach, we thought it would be a great place to get a wonderful view of the island. The bus stop is actually a bit of a walk from the lighthouse. I should mention once again how stroller unfriendly that Bermuda seems to be, in general. We were glad that we had the stroller, but we had to make careful decisions about which side of the road to walk. The roads were often fairly narrow and somewhat curvy.

The plan was to eat at the Tea Room at the lighthouse for lunch. My guidebook said it was fairly cheap, which is rare in Bermuda. I guess food is so expensive because they have to import so much? Whatever the reason, Bermuda food is pricey. Apparently, Bermuda has the highest cost of living in the world. Anyway, back to our story. We wanted to eat at the Tea Room, but we found out that it isn’t open on Mondays and Tuesdays. Bummer. We didn’t have any other food options nearby, so we bought a candy bar each at the gift shop. Fortunately, we had some suitable food for Maddie in the backpack (don’t worry, we didn’t feed her chocolate bars for lunch).

We bought tickets to go up into the lighthouse at the gift shop, and we decided to take turns going up to take in the views. I’m so glad we opted to take turns! The stairs are very narrow and seem to spiral to the top forever. I can’t imagine trying to carry a squirmy toddler up those stairs, even if she had been strapped in the Ergo carrier. Yikes! I got to the top and found the tiny door that led onto the balcony. I stooped through the door and was struck by a bunch of wind and the simultaneous realization that I was in a really high place in the open air. My body reacted with intense fear. I took the photo above and got the heck back inside the lighthouse. I just hoped that Gabe would be braver than me.

Thankfully, he was. He said the views were incredible, and he took a bunch of photos.

You can see how crazy the development is in Bermuda. It’s one of the most densely populated countries in the world. You can also see that Bermuda is made up of many, many islands (approximately 138).

A stranger offered to take our photo when we were all safely on the ground again.

Maddie enjoyed the grounds of the lighthouse much better than her morning at the beach.

She played in the grass a bit.

She pointed at our ship, which we could see from the lighthouse hill. Ok, maybe she wasn’t actually pointing at the ship, but who knows really. Our ship was in that general direction.

We took a few photos of our ship from afar. The other ship is from the Norwegian cruise line. Our ship is the one on the left.

We posed for several photos here since Maddie was in a good mood.

We opted to collapse and carry the stroller and use the Ergo carrier for Maddie on the way back to the bus stop. Strangers took our photos everywhere!

We were pretty tired on the walk back to the bus stop, which was fairly confusing as the stops are not clearly marked. We weren’t quite sure at first if we remembered correctly where the bus had stopped to drop us off. We ended up walking too far and needed to retrace some of our steps. The bus stop was marked by a blue pole with no words, instructions, or maps. Just a blue pole. You’d think the least they could do would be to write BUS STOP on it, right?

To make matters worse, at least one pink bus passed us by while we were waiting. We just weren’t completely sure that we were in the right place! Finally, a bus stopped for us and we were on our way back to the Dockyards. We had limited time to get back on the ship before sail away.

This bus seemed to stop EVERYWHERE. We saw lots of locals as they seem to use the bus system frequently. Everyone in Bermuda seems to know each other, which is neat. The bus drivers honk and wave when they pass each other. Several times they would say to one of the locals on the bus, sitting near the front, “that was Jerry” or “that was Mike.” I hear that the schoolchildren also use the pink buses, but we did not experience this ourselves.

Maddie was rather antsy, though the passengers around us were nice and seemed to really love her. She got a ton of attention everywhere we went. We were sitting near the front of the bus where a row of seats is along the side and faces another row of seats on the opposite side (so that we are traveling sideways instead of facing the front). Maddie was sitting on my lap for most of the ride, and we had a couple to our left from one of the cruise ships. They were interacting with Maddie and helping to entertain her a little bit. At one point, the lady noticed Maddie’s underdeveloped foot and nudged her husband to show him. She did this discretely, but not discretely enough as Gabe noticed from across the aisle. Oh well, we weren’t upset about it, just something that makes us a little sad.

We were so happy to finally make it to Kings Wharf (the Dockyards). Maddie had had just about enough of sitting still on a bus. She was definitely reaching her breaking point, especially since she had not taken a normal length nap. We worried a bit about how dinner might be that night! We made our way back to the ship and went to our cabin to get ready for dinner and sail away. More about this day in my next post…

I have so many photos to share from this day that I thought it best to break it into several posts.

The room service on the first day was decent, but we definitely prefer the breakfast in the dining room over all options. We started our day in the dining room where I ordered way more than any human should order for breakfast. I couldn’t help myself…I wanted pancakes, eggs, bacon, AND the fabulous oatmeal. I didn’t get a chance to eat everything, but that was because we were trying to make the next bus to Horseshoe Bay and the service was ridiculously slow.

We exited the ship and noticed that a pink bus was at the stop, so we hustled to catch the bus. We got there, and we thought we were in luck as they had just enough seats for us (and it was the right bus). Unfortunately, remember those passes that I said everyone else had yesterday and we didn’t? Well, it turns out that the ferry will accept them, but the busses will not. They suggested that we might be able to get them in the visitor center, but by the time I stood in line at the visitor center, the bus was gone. They informed us that the only place that we could redeem our ship’s passes for real passes was back at the ship. UGH! It wasn’t terribly far away, but it was a good distance. Gabe stayed near the bus stop with Maddie while I ran around trying to get our passes. So, I started the day off with quite a bit of walking! Oh well, I guess I needed to work off all that cruise food, right?

We were upset about the bus passes because the schedule indicated that the buses only come every 30 minutes. Apparently, they arrange for some special buses while the cruise ships are in port, and another one arrived not too long after the first one.

When I finally came back with the proper passes, another bus was waiting and they had just enough seats for us again. This time, we were able to board. It was a bit tricky with the stroller (they had a tiny area to stow the stroller), two backpacks (one for the “stuff” we needed in port for Maddie, one for the big camera), and a squirmy 15-month old!

The bus ride to Horseshoe Bay Beach was not too bad. We had hopped onto a special bus that was mostly taking passengers to the beach, so it made only a few other stops. It didn’t seem to take too long to get to the beach, and Maddie was content to sit on my lap and look out the window at all the water and colorful houses. The scenery was very pretty! It’s so striking how narrow Bermuda is in most places (and let’s not forget that it is a series of little islands, not just one island). We could often see the beautiful ocean on both sides of the bus. During this trek, we traveled over the smallest drawbridge in the world, Somerset Bridge.

We arrived at the beach and had to walk down a fairly steep hill to get to the actual beach from the bus stop, though it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had heard from numerous reports on Cruise Critic. Everyone had recommended paying the taxi $1-2 to ride up the hill, but I’m not sure it’s necessary in most cases. It’s not THAT bad.

When we got to the sandy area with changing rooms and rentals, we stopped to take off our shoes and apply generous amounts of sunscreen. Gabe and I had a little sunburn from St. George’s since we neglected to lather ourselves as much as we had lathered the baby. Maddie smiled and wiggled her toes when we put her in the sand. We thought this was going to go very well!

Getting the stroller from the road to the beach was a bit of a challenge. As you can imagine, it doesn’t roll well through the soft sand. And the sand was so very soft. I loved how it felt on my bare feet! The stroller was much easier to push once we got closer to the water.

Right away, Maddie seemed to hate it. I think that the waves were too loud and scary for her. I can see how that might be a little frightening if you’re seeing it for the first time. We had all kinds of hopes of getting some beautiful family photos, but it was clear that this was not going to happen. She was somewhat content to be held but only when combined with the pacifier. She was most happy when she was in the stroller. I cannot emphasize how much she loves her new stroller. We are very happy with it!

I love the following photo. It’s not the family photo that I had envisioned, but it is truly priceless. This sums up Maddie’s thoughts on the beach better than I ever could in words.

We had to dip her toes into the water once since this was her first encounter with an ocean, but she was not a fan. It was a very quick dip.

We wanted to explore all the rock formations along the side of the beach, which proved to be a little tricky in places with the stroller. We could get through most parts without any climbing, but one place required picking up the stroller to get over a few rocks. It wasn’t too bad, and it was worth the view (and no, it wasn’t dangerous, just awkward). We used the Gorillapod on the rocks to snap a few shots of the two of us since Maddie didn’t want to cooperate for photos.

Maddie was very content in the stroller, and I got a kick out of taking photos of her “fun in the sun.” Does life get any better?

After we strolled around a bit, Maddie fell asleep in the stroller. We made the trek up the hill instead of paying the taxis, and it wasn’t too terrible. We didn’t want to disrupt Maddie’s nap, that’s for sure! We were the only ones getting on the bus at the stop, and we were going a very short distance to the lighthouse. The bus driver was kind enough to let us carry Maddie onto the bus while still snoozing in her stroller. Very convenient! We just made sure to put on the brakes and keep a good grip on the stroller for our short ride. More about the rest of the day in the next two posts…