According to Grace, The Kitty and the dogs are friends. Luckily, we haven't heard too much about the dogs lately and she didn't bring them on the cruise with her.
By the time we got checked in at the hotel and had something to eat it was almost 4:00. Everything seemed to take longer than normal on Wednesday, for some reason, so I was glad you weren't waiting for us. I know how impatient Grace can get when she's waiting and I assume Anakin probably isn't much better at waiting than she is.
The cruise wasn't quite what we expected since we weren't able to get in to any ports and spent the three days chasing? avoiding? the hurricane. The pools and the aquaduck were closed most of the time, too, which did not go over well with Miss Gracie. Overall, though, it wasn't a bad cruise. We loved the shows, the food and the break from reality. The waves only got really rough Saturday night. The rest of the time the motion wasn't too bad.
Grace loved the kids clubs, and they were great with her. They were not phased at all by the epilepsy or the autism. As long as she's young enough for the Oceaneers Club and Lab (12 and under I think it is) I can see cruises being great for her. Once she's too old for them and has to go to the tweens or teens clubs, we might have to re-think things, though, since I would not be comfortable with her being able to sign herself in and out of the clubs or with her wandering around the ship on her own. Megan (at 11 1/2) was fine with that on this cruise, but Grace is very young for her age. She'll be 9 next month and still has no sense of safety in parking lots or on the street and it way too trusting of people. Socially/emotionally she's more like a 5 or 6 year old.
Like Anakin, she can't ride a bike--although she does have one with training wheels that she tries to ride sometimes. At one of her physio appointments I mentioned that I wasn't sure what we were going to do when she outgrew this bike because I didn't think she'd be rid of the training wheels before then. The therapist mentioned that it was possible to get training wheels for larger bikes. I don't know if that would be a possibility for Anakin or if he needs the added support of the trike. At this point, I don't know if we'll go for the larger training wheels for Grace or if we will look into getting her a special needs bike/trike sometime over the next few years. Her balance will probably be the deciding factor for us.