i realized as i was posting our amazing pics, that i wasn't fully telling some of the funniest stories. so more pics are forthcoming in the next few days, but here are my favorite johnisms from the journey.
- other-one-n. my mom's brother has relatively recently (a couple of years) married a wonderful lady and, so she and her two almost-grown kids have become a part of our family. they are awesome. the son shares the same name as my brother. so what is a two-year-old to do, with two people of the same name? well my bro is easy - he's uncle n. and using awesome toddler logic, the other n becomes ... other-one-n. which he (and everyone else) finds endearing and hysterical. so other-one-n stuck, and is pretty much how we referred to him the whole trip.
- uncle l. my brother has had a very cool girlfriend for years now, so we were very glad she was on the trip with us. in fact, n proposed to her on the ship, so now she'll officially become part of the family! as we were playing around with john, pointing to members of the family and saying the wrong names so he would say "no!" and correct us, i pointed at l and said, "that's uncle l!" but instead of correcting me, john said, "yeah!" and (perhaps unfortunately) that stuck as well. good news is, "uncle" l is the best sport ever and sort of found that endearing too.
- riding the alligator. when we first got on the ship, john was terrified of elevators. he's never liked them. but after a few trips up and down, he started to like it, and to ask to ride on it ... only he called it the alligator. so for the whole trip, every time we entered the hallway, he'd say, "ride on the alligator!" much to the grins of fellow passengers.
- poker. apparently, the guys (and some gals) in my family LOVE to play poker ... and a lot of poker was played on the ship. enough so that john quickly started to ask anytime his daddy wasn't in his sight, "daddy playing poker?" and in another fine example of toddler logic, he decided that the chips are actually called "poker," so he would sit at the table with the guys, hold onto his one chip, and gleefully shout, "my poker!"
- creatures. since we had a kid in our cabin, our room steward made towel animals for us more nights than for anyone else. on the first night, i exclaimed "oh, look, john, a creature!" when we first walked into the room. so every following night, john would enter the room asking, "creature?" hoping to find a towel creation. and several nights he got one, much to his glee!
- airplanes. in alaska, there are a TON of seaplanes. every port we were in, there would be seaplanes taking off and landing, and a favorite passtime of john quickly became scanning the sky and water for "other one airplane?" this was awesome in port. less so on the open seas when we were a day away from the next "other one" airplane and his little heart was more or less shattered not to see one.
- whales. fortunately, whales were a close second to look for. and since we saw one from the dining room on one of the first couple nights, john could easily be entertained staring out a window watching for whales. and since grammie yelled excitedly, "whale! a whale! a whale!" when we saw that first one, john pretty much followed suit for every slightly-whale-shaped wave. (there are a lot of those.)
- bad fish. gigi and great-grandpa gave john a copy of "one fish two fish red fish blue fish" for reading on the cruise. and for some reason, he utterly fixated on the part that says, "and some are very, very bad." appropos of nothing, he would say, "bad fish!" he would even explain what the bad fish did - "hit other one fish!"
- be nice, bear! apparently my son likes to scold animals. on our way from seward, where the cruise ended, to anchorage, we stopped at a wildlife preserve for sick and injured animals. among many animals we saw were two brown bears. the park rangers were feeding the bears hot dogs, and one bear swatted at the other, chased it off, and ate the other bear's hot dog. which did NOT sit well with john, who said, "be nice, bear! don't eat other-one bear's hot dog!" even now if i ask him about the bears, he will repeat his admonition.
i am sure there were a million more - this trip was amazing, and sweet john provided a ton of the entertainment for this mama. he ran like crazy, all over the ship - he's hard to keep up with! but he mostly listened really well, and i was really proud of him overall.
and anytime i would get a little tired or a little wrought, he would do something else to knock my socks off and remind me why it's awesome to see the world through the eyes of a two-year-old.
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