travelogue: excursions (ketchikan)

as you may know if you've ever been on a cruise, a whole lot of the fun actually takes place off the ship, in the ports, on excursions. and this trip to alaska was jam-packed with adventures, for sure.

day 3: ketchikan, alaska

our first stop along the way was ketchikan. and ketchikan offered something that caught my eye the instant i saw it advertised: snorkeling. in alaska. did you catch that? who the heck snorkels in alaska? THIS girl! (along with my husband, other-one-n, cousin d, and cousin s - my fellow bad-a travelers and underwater partners in crime.)

to answer your question, yes, the water was freezing cold. but the good news is, we didn't feel that at all through these sexy mammajammas:

7mm of neoprene goes a long way to keep a body warm.

the whole crew all decked out. don't we look like
superheros or x-men or SOMETHING cool?

in all seriousness, the wetsuits kept us remarkably comfortable, and we saw some very cool stuff under the 47 degree water. everything from sea cucumbers to sea urchins to TONS of starfish (in TONS of sizes) to amazing kelp forests to a bright orange rockfish about 1.5 feet long. the morning before the snorkel company had seen orca travelling through the channel we were in, but we didn't have that level of luck on our day ... but it was still unbelievable. and when they served tasty hot chocolate at the end, you almost didn't even need the warm up. i know, i was skeptical too, but it's true!

meanwhile, back on the ship, gigi and great grandpa had a great time with john. this was when he discovered the bad fish in "one fish two fish." he reminded me this morning that the fish was bad, so that really did make an impression.

Comments

i'm furberizing my baby

ok, let's get this straight right off the bat: i don't know if i am literally following dr. furber's methods of sleep training. there are so many versions out there. but saying we're furberizing john is WAY more fun than saying that i'm letting him cry his little lungs out in an attempt to teach him to sleep on his own. it's night two of our efforts. he went right to sleep last night, which was great. and he slept for 5.25 hours (!!!!) before waking up at 2:30 a.m. when he woke up crying, i let him cry for 5 minutes before going in to soothe him. (the soothing barely works at all, by the way, but it's what i'm supposed to do ...) then i let him cry for 10 more minutes before going in to soothe him again. next on the agenda was a 15 minute stretch of crying - but he fell asleep after 8 minutes. so a sum total of 22 minutes of crying. not too bad for night two. i've heard night three can be the worst ... so we'll hold on to our hats tonight. mean

on lullabies

i am not a singer. if you've sat behind me in church, you know this to be true. (and i'm sorry.) a musician, yes. a singer no. and yet i find myself singing to john almost nonstop. and the beauty is, he seems to actually like it! (there's no accounting for taste. he also thinks i'm the most beautiful woman in the world. i'm no ogre, but i'm certainly not winning any beauty contests outside of my son's brain!) and actually, i've written some lullabies for john that are pretty nice. and it made me think: did your parents sing to you? do you remember what they sang, and better yet, if you have kids, do you sing the same songs to them? reply in the comments!

home

annapolis rock 1988 thirty years ago, my family moved from denton, tx, to a tiny rural town in the mountains of maryland. i remember being sad as we sold our things (we were packing everything into two old cars to drive north) and actually crying over the sale of our washing machine. transition does strange things to kids' emotions. yet i remember arriving, excited, into this strange green mountainous place, and i remember even more anticipation as we found a home ("the old taylor place") and got ready for school to start at smithsburg elementary. third grade -- the same grade john starts this school year. i remember meeting my first friend on a dusty dirt road - the "alley" that ran behind the high school tennis courts and athletic fields from our home just at the town's outskirts to her home just outside downtown. (if you've never known a small town downtown, that's probably hard to envision). it was an amazing place to be a child. 199

john's mom works

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