It must be time to pack it in and head to our next destination. Our exact departure date and next “new home”, as Jonah would call it, were up in the air until just over the weekend. We were torn between more hardcore adventures in Ethiopia or China (hey, it turned out we could get a cheap flight to Beijing!) and a more relaxed stint in the English countryside. After much back and forth, we settled on the latter. Were we getting soft? we wondered. No, no, just in need of some quiet time together before we wrap up our sabbatical.And so we’ll spend the final month of our journey much like we spent the first leg of it with Macartan, Jacobia, and Aoife—surrounded by beautiful scenery, enjoying lovely walks, taking scenic drives, hopefully spending more time under sunny skies than cloudy ones. Either way, it will be relaxing and all playtime for the three of us. As always, the excitement of a new place puts a hop in my step, though there is much we will miss about Cape Town to be sure.
Where have the last couple of weeks gone? They’ve been filled with mornings on the beach, rainy days at Dom and Rob’s house, a get-a-way to the wine country, and delicious meals with Doris.
Two weeks ago last Saturday, we headed over to the weekend spot to see and be seen if you’re a Cape Town yuppie: the Old Biscuit Mill Market. A couple of guys turned an old biscuit mill in the city’s industrial area into a fabulous upscale weekend market complete with food stalls selling organic produce and veges, baked desserts, quiches, breads, cheeses, and homemade specialty sauces or toppings of one sort or another, along with semi-enclosed boutiques selling funky clothing, jewelry, and home furnishings. An adjoining greenhouse-like area sports creatively-prepared food to order and eat on the spot—from ostrich and lamb burgers to crepes and gourmet pizza. The market is something of a cross between Pender Island’s fabulous Saturday morning market and the weekend farmer’s market at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. We caravanned over to the market that morning with our fellow yuppies, Dom and Rob, and yuppy-in-training Charlotte.Over the course of our morning at the market, Jonah was interested in the trailers parked outside (a most unyuppy fascination, but they were yuppified retro-looking, silver trailers, not sure what they’re used for, but Jonah quite predictably wanted to drive them), Charlotte’s bread, the beautiful golden retriever that licked him, and finally, a gingerbread man cookie, which he devoured VERY quickly. More cookie, Jonah requested. As I went off to buy our week’s produce, Jonah led Jeremy back into the market in search of the gingerbread cookie vender. Jeremy told me later that he would have bought Jonah another one if Jonah could have found his way back to the right stall, but Jonah took a turn down the wrong aisle and so it was back outside to the trailers. From there to the supermarket and lunch at home with no nap for the little man who woke up late that morning in any event.
The next day, Sunday, Jonah woke up with his fourth cold since we arrived in South Africa! This alone is reason enough to leave their winter season behind and head to a summer season, even if it may be a wet one. With sniffly Jonah in the back seat, we caravanned that morning with Dom, Rob, and Charlotte to Franschhoek, a charming village nestled in Franschhoek Valley in the heart of the Cape Winelands, also called the gourmet capital of South Africa. Dome’s dad seems to own half of Franschhoek, including a fabulous house on a wine farm.
The drive to Franschhoek revealed none of the beauty of the area, as the mountains and green landscape were shrouded in clouds. We got to Franschhoek not quite in time for lunch so stopped at Dom’s dad’s lovely hotel, Le Franschhoek Hotel & Spa, to warm ourselves up with hot chocolate and tea before lunch. From lounging about with hot cocoa to the restaurant at Dom’s dad’s winery (Dieu Donné Vineyards), we sat at a table by the large windows with an increasingly lovely view of the valley below as the fog slowly began to lift and the rain started to subside. From our delicious lunch to the farm house down the hill, we put the kids down for a nap. While Charlotte snoozed, Jonah just chatted it up with Paddington Bear, who Jonah found perched on a window sill in our little wing of the house (with heated floors—bonus!).
We spent the afternoon sitting by the wonderfully toasty fire and, later, going for a walk and eating the sweet grapes from the vines. I had to pass on the walk because I was absolutely exhausted! I’d basically been up since 4:30 am, having slept off and on for the next three hours in Jonah’s room with him next to me on the bed. So I napped on the couch by the cozy fire. We had pizza for dinner at home, and then it was off to bed early for Jonah. While the kids slept, we enjoyed an amazing bottle of Dieu Donné wine and the crackling sound of the wood slowly burning in the fireplace.
We woke up the next day around 7:30 am and headed off to Le Franschhoek Hotel & Spa for breakfast. We had a delightfully enormous breakfast (my favorite meal!) before walking around the hotel grounds, which are just beautiful and so peaceful with the mountain backdrop and trees with their multiple-colored leaves. We spent the rest of the morning at a plant nursery that has a little farm of its own with chickens, pigs, and bunnies. Jonah and Charlotte chased after the rabbits, trying to feed them carrots. The kids played a bit at the nursery’s playground before hoofing it over to the train tracks (no longer in use) and walking along them back to the parking area. Given Jonah’s blossoming love affair with trains, Jonah was absolutely overjoyed!
Jonah is now a train guy, no question about it. This took hold quite quickly one day. He now insists on reading The Little Engine that Could before naps, bedtime, in the car. He tells his own stories about the trains and the animals, characters, and toys trying to get over the mountain. So you can imagine how much Jonah loved sitting on the train tracks. He told me that he was going to sit on the tracks until the train came. Well, my dear Jonah, I explained, that was probably not going to happen. That wasn’t sufficient to persuade him to move. So I told him that the train was never going to come because it no longer operated in Franschhoek, and added in (as a sort of “life lesson”) that if the train tracks were still in operation, we wouldn’t be sitting on them since we wouldn’t know the train schedule. He thought for a minute, quickly dismissing both my life lesson and point of fact. Thankfully, the allure of a tractor idly sitting in the parking lot finally got him to move along. He and Charlotte took turns “driving” the tractor, before we headed to the Dieu Donné winery to do a tasting and check out the amazing (now cloud-free) view of the valley below.Monday turned into a beautiful day. The clouds eventually lifted, revealing a lovely little valley encircled by mountains. Farms on the hillside. Vineyards with leaves changing colors on the valley floor. So picturesque.
We headed back to the farm house, where we pulled together a left-overs lunch (another favorite of mine). After lunch, we walked around the grounds of the farm house. The kids ran around, loving the huge expanse of grass and little enclosed area for bocce ball. On the drive back home, I was the only one who napped (a short ten minute snooze). It was a beautiful afternoon in Camps Bay, where we hung out at home before an early bedtime for Jonah.The rest of the week was quite mellow, largely due to the colder weather. And, man, was it cold that week! With one electric plug-in heater and one extra blanket, we did our best to keep warm inside the house. We had to roll the electric heater from Jonah’s room to our room, heating one after the other. We’d warm up Jonah’s room before he went to bed and then set out to warm ours. By the time I opened Jonah’s door before we went to bed, his room was back to being an ice box. That week he slept in two diapers (to avoid peeing out and further adding a chill), two pairs of long-sleeved pajamas, two sleep sacks, and socks! This week’s cold weather isn’t nearly as chilly…so far.
On Tuesday, we went to Doris’s house in the morning to hang out with her and continue to get her financial affairs in order. Doris and Jonah played with his cars on the playmat we brought from home. From Doris’s house, we went to the airport to get a new contract for our rental car (since we had decided to extend our stay in Cape Town and needed to use a different credit card’s insurance coverage for the car).
We spent Wednesday morning hanging out with Dom and Charlotte at their house. On Thursday, we picked up Dom and Charlotte to go to Gardens Shopping Center, where Dom and I both did some grocery shopping at Woolworths and the kids enjoyed playing on the coin-operated bus on which we all first met shortly after our arrival in Cape Town. On Friday, we dropped Jeremy off at a café for him to work since we’d lost power at home (we’ve lost power more here than during our entire time in Uganda), before picking up Dom and Charlotte and heading to Plinka Plonka. That day, Jonah spent most of his time on the play structure.
We returned home on Friday to a long bar (perhaps the frame for a mattress?) draped across two chairs with all of our wet clothes hanging. Desperate for clean clothes but stuck in the middle of a storm system, we’d hung our clothes around the house (over chairs, on hangers hanging from light fixtures, on doorknobs) with the hope that they’d dry within a few days. Our house cleaning woman, Princess, had brilliantly constructed the indoor drying rack and moved all of our clothes to it. This is not an uncommon thing—Princess deciding she has a better way of doing things around the house than we do. And she’s usually right, despite our having to figure out where things have been moved to. Disappearing laundry bags, shoes, diapers, pajamas, all things that have a proper place get moved. This would drive some people crazy, I imagine, but she is too amazing to let our own ideas of proper placement get the better of us.In any event, while Jeremy put Jonah to bed (where he did sleep, thankfully!), I went to the Waterfront to do a little shopping. I came home with another purse . . . much to Jeremy’s, well, we’ll just call it amusement. It’s beautiful—made of red and black leather (local leather), simple. I can use it for work when we go home . . . oh, after I get a job, of course. It’ll fit a notepad in it perfectly, so I’ll be able to use it to go to meetings without having to separately carry my notepad. Get the logic?
On Saturday morning, we got a call from Avis, letting us know that our rental car needed to be serviced and asking us to bring it in to trade for another car. Okay, we said, so long as we could return it to a closer office than the airport. No worries, the woman would have said if she’d been a Californian. Instead, she said, no problem. So we headed over to Sea Point, where I chatted with the nice guy (Patrick) working there. I asked for the same car, which they had, so he brought it out. Patrick was about to spray it with some air freshener, when I called out, “Oh, no, please don’t spray anything inside the car. The boy has problems with the smell.” By “has problems”, of course, I mean “can lead him down a path of unknown health problems because of the horrible, horrible toxics in air fresheners”. “Oh, okay,” Patrick replied. I got ready to put Jonah’s car seat in the car and got a whiff of what the guy was trying to mask—the smell of urine or worse, a rotting corpse of some sort. Foul, totally foul smell. I yelped. “Uh, is it possible to get a car that doesn’t smell like this?” I asked. “Oh, of course. So sorry,” Patrick replied.
After running around a bit, Patrick hollered to Jeremy and me, “To make up for that smell, I’m going to get you a really great car.” Jeremy and I smiled at each other. And out came the Mercedes C180 Kompressor. Jeremy and I laughed out loud. “This may be the nicest car we ever drive,” we told Patrick. Jeremy and I had a brief conversation about whether we should actually take the car because of our concerns about it getting stolen, our somehow marking the leather interior and/or scratching the near-flawless silver paint job. It’s hard to turn away a beautiful car though, especially when you’re paying the rate for a basic midsize car.
Jonah loved that his window finally went down all the way. His window in our other car didn’t work. In fact, the window buttons were the only ones I think we understood in our Mercedes at first, until I read through the owner’s manual on our drive that day. I couldn’t even find the radio display screen until I pushed a button and a panel slid up and revealed it. Best of all, it is the smoothest driving car we’ve ever driven. By light years, smooth. And the pick up is AMAZING! We do feel ridiculous driving it, at least we did that first day. Now we’re so used to the smooth ride that it just FEELS right. Since I already feel like I’m still 24 some days and not 36—couldn’t possibly be old enough to be somebody’s mother—I have brief moments of thinking I must look like some spoiled 18 year old driving mommy and daddy’s car. But, let’s be honest, I haven’t looked like I was 18 since I was maybe 24. And I haven’t looked like I was 24 since I was perhaps 28. So, maybe the car fits if that’s the fit you’re looking for. We’ll take it for ten days, and that’s just what we did.Driving into Guguletu the next day, I was all too aware of our car and how it might stand out, make us stand out even more than we already do. But we counted three BMWs and three Mercedes. Most cars in the township seem to be Toyota Cressidas. They’re everywhere. The Cressida was Jeremy’s family car when he was a kid. He said recently how surprised he was by the number of Cressidas we’ve seen here. I told him I thought it had been a common car back in the states in the 1980s, but he assured me that, as a kid, he always counted the other Cressidas on the road, and the Cressida was far outnumbered by the Toyota Corolla. I reminded him that this wasn’t exactly good social science evidence, but he said it was good enough for an eight year old. True enough I suppose.
In any event, that Saturday morning we took our new wheels for a spin. It was mostly a clear day, although there were spurts of rain throughout. We planned to head to Kalk Bay but got a bit lost. Chapman’s Peak Drive is closed, so you have to find another route from Camps Bay. After a missed turnoff sent us too far out of our way to make it to Kalk Bay in time for lunch, we decided to head to closer-by Hout Bay, where we walked around the wharf, admired the boats and fisherman with their clotheslines draped with drying clothes, and ate at the restaurant right along the water. We’d eaten there with Doris and Willie when we were here last with my mom and Rachel. The food was pretty good. Jonah devoured his fish. I took my turn at the steering wheel of our Mercedes on the drive home and had a blast. No nap for Jonah, early to bed that night.The next morning we picked up Doris, who was giddy at the sight of her new ride. She told us that people in Guguletu were asking her about the white chauffeurs who were regularly picking her up. If they could only see her now in a Mercedes! We drove through Guguletu a bit, Doris showing us her old house and church on our way to drive by a retirement facility nearby.
We headed next to Fish Hoek, where we hung out at the nice playground situated right by the beach. It was a bit chilly, but for the most part the rain managed to hold off. Jonah pretended that part of the play structure was an elevator, and he invited Jeremy, Doris, and me to get on for a lift. From the playground, we headed back to Kalk Bay for lunch, eating at an okay restaurant right on the water. We could see the train tracks from our table and saw several trains go by, much to Jonah’s great pleasure. No nap in the car or at home, but Jonah managed to keep it together for an early dinner at home with Jeremy’s former students, Jessica and Andrew.On Monday, I took Jonah to the pediatrician for a look inside his ears to rule out an ear infection. The night before he had woken up twice—at 11 pm and 12:30 am. Both times Jeremy gave Jonah milk and back to sleep he went. Our 10:30 am appointment gave us enough time to hang out a bit at home first, enjoying a leisurely breakfast and coffee before heading over to Gardens. A real bummer to be inside that day because the weather was gorgeous! The doctor did, in fact, rule out an ear infection, but she told us Jonah had quite a bit of mucus in his throat and nose. She prescribed a nasal spray and decongestant syrup, the latter of which I knew doctors in the states recommended against. Turns out they don’t recommend the nasal spray for kids under six either. So, saline drops it’s been to help drain Jonah’s nose.
So as not to pass up the stunning weather, we did spend time before and after lunch on the balcony, Jonah riding the boda boda. Jonah took a wonderfully long nap, until after 4:30 pm, following which we quickly headed over to Dom and Rob’s house for dinner. We had a lovely evening with them, delicious dinner, sitting by the fire while Jonah and Charlotte ran around and played together.
Tuesday was another gorgeous day. Jonah initially wanted his day to start at 4:30 am but thankfully went back to bed after I sat with him in his room for about twenty minutes. When I first asked him whether I could put him back in his bed, he mumbled something totally incomprehensible. The only part I caught was “bit longer” at the very end of his sentence. We sat together for a bit longer before I put him back in his bed, sang “Baa Baa Black Sheep” (on request), and went back to sleep myself.
Dom and Charlotte picked us up that morning. We headed to Camps Bay Tidal Pool, only to find that the tide was so far out that it was like walking in quicksand, in addition to being assaulted by the noxious smell of chlorine from a guy ridding the tidal pool wall of black fungus. So we went over to Bakoven Beach with its lovely cove, lots of shells, and kayaks sprawled on different parts of the beach. Jonah went straight to the lapping water and was overcome by a gentle wave that made him lose his balance, fall to his hands and knees, and get quite wet. He was not pleased about that, perhaps because of how surprisingly cold the water was when almost fully submerged. After his plunge in the ocean, he and Charlotte made their way to the boats, where Jonah pretended to drive the kayak for a while. More playing in the sand, eating snacks, and then it was back home for a late lunch and nap.
The next few days were equally mellow. On Wednesday, Jonah and I went to Clifton Beach, where we spent most of our time making train tracks and caves in the sand. Jonah did want to meander down to the water, cautious not to get too close to the incoming waves. He decided not to nap that afternoon, so Jeremy, Jonah, and I picked up and headed to Llandudno Beach just ten minutes from our pad to enjoy the gorgeous weather. We watched the huge waves, played in the sand, admired the beginnings of the sunset colors, and did our best to avoid the large, wet dogs running around. “No, doggy! No, doggy!” Jonah would tell them, when they got too close.
On Thursday, we hung out with Dom and Charlotte at their house and went with them to Charlotte’s doctor’s appointment before they dropped us at home for lunch. Friday was another gorgeous beach day. Jonah and I sat on the sand, made more train tracks, this time creating an entire town that Jonah named “Imam”.Friday afternoon, while Jeremy was home with Jonah, who was supposed to be napping, I went to the Canal Walk Shopping Center to pick up some things. I got a call from Jeremy who told me he’d opened Jonah’s door after Jonah started to complain some forty-five to sixty minutes after going into his crib, only to find that Jonah was practically naked. All he had on was his long-sleeved shirt, which he couldn’t manage to get off. Jeremy asked Jonah, “Where’s your diaper?” Jonah pointed to his diaper on the floor and said, “It has pee in it.” He had unzipped his sleep sack, taken it off, along with his diaper, and peed in his bed (not much, but still). Thankfully, no poops . . . I can just picture poop smeared all over his crib. Yuck!
Saturday morning seemed to pass quickly as we scurried around the house on this computer, Jeremy’s rented computer, trying to book airline tickets to London. We managed to find reasonably priced nonstop, one-way tickets from Cape Town to London on British Airways. Phew. I had some convincing to do with Jeremy to avoid a cheaper route through Dubai (a flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, followed by an overnight flight to Dubai and a seven-hour flight the next day to London—no thanks!) and a slightly cheaper route that would have had us spending all day tomorrow in Jo’burg before catching an overnight flight to London. Jonah is a well-seasoned traveler, for sure, but it seemed necessary to spare us all the agony of multiple potentially sleepless flights.
After settling on and buying our plane tickets, we headed over to Dom and Rob’s place, where we hung out for a bit before walking to a nearby café for lunch. From flip-flops on Friday to umbrellas and jackets on Saturday, the weather returned to its designated season. While walking back to Dom and Rob’s house from lunch, we hollered our good-byes, the three of us scrambling to our car and the three of them scurrying inside their house, all of us trying to avoid the sudden downpour and gusty winds.
We picked up Doris the next morning for our last outing together. With flowers we bought from street vendors along the way to the cemetery, we went to visit Willie’s grave. Doris’s husband had been a warm and gentle man and, together, they lovingly cared for one another for nearly fifty years before he died last year. Doris hadn’t been to his graveside in months, perhaps not since he was buried. I’m not sure. In any event, we nearly couldn’t find Willie’s grave. Buried in sand with no permanent headstone, all we had to go by was a wood cross with his name written across it in permanent market. The paint on the cross was chipping, and Willie’s name was fading. Another month and there would have been no figuring out which grave was Willie’s. The cemetery caretakers (not paid by anyone but donations from visiting families looking to have their loved-one’s grave straightened up, cleared of weeds) erected a sand mound, creating a hole in which Doris could place the flowers. She was quite upset by the state of Willie’s grave, resolving to get a new cross and place a headstone as soon as possible.From the cemetery, we took the side streets through the industrial part of Cape Town (passing the yupified biscuit mill) on our way to the Waterfront for lunch. We had a tasty, large meal before Jeremy dropped Jonah and me at home while Doris did some grocery shopping at Pick ‘n Pay. Jeremy returned to the Waterfront to get Doris and take her home. A wasted trip back home for us, Jonah didn’t end up napping that day.
Yesterday Jonah and I headed over to the Gardens Shopping Center to run some last minute errands. I wanted to pick up a few new books for Jonah for the airplane, in addition to a DVD with cars or some such moving vehicles. Instead I found a Bob the Builder video, which Jonah now carries around the house, excitedly waiting for our airplane trip to be able to watch it. I hope the build up isn’t greater than his interest in the video itself.
We ran into Rob and Charlotte at the shopping center so got to say a quick hello before we went our separate ways with our various errands. They too leave for the UK tomorrow with plans to spend a month visiting family and friends in Scotland and England. Jonah and I hung out on the much-beloved red bus at the shopping center. I even gave him three coins to use for it. A couple of weeks ago he wasn’t able to put the coin in the machine himself (not realizing that he needed to turn the coin to get it to fit inside and not quite able to do it even after I showed him how), but he was a master at it yesterday.
Thankfully, Jonah napped in the afternoon. The same couldn’t be said for today. I suppose a mix of nap and no-nap days is fine. On the no-nap days, Jonah ends up going to sleep early, which gives Jeremy and me more of an evening to ourselves. On nap days, the three of us have time after dinner to play together, which is fun and quite nice too.
This morning Jonah and I ran a couple of errands before heading over to hang out with Dom and Charlotte at their house. Like with Advah and Guy in Uganda, we handed over items we won’t be taking with us—mostly non-perishable foods and our eco-friendly detergent. I’m still planning to find a way to lug Jonah’s parking garage with us, much to Jeremy’s chagrin. We’ll leave Jonah’s little table and chair for Hanif’s or Princess’s kids.
When it became clear this afternoon that Jonah wasn’t going to nap, we decided to quickly get him out of his crib and head over to the Mount Nelson Hotel for afternoon tea. It’s one of those things “they” recommend tourists do when visiting Cape Town. As I write, I still think I might vomit. Aside from the couple of small party sandwiches (no crust, small rectangles) and a couple of squares of quiche, the afternoon-tea-turned-dinner was made up of desserts, including scones, cheesecake, marble cake, toffee squares, I can’t even remember what else. Sugar, sugar, sugar. Jonah ate two scones, which he referred to as “cake” and happily devoured. Jeremy and I each had a few minutes to read a newspaper article. Jonah sat in a high chair and chatted with everyone who walked by. We caught a gorgeous sunset on our drive home. Jonah ate a bit of an avocado, and then it was early to bed.
Since our flight doesn’t leave until 8 pm tomorrow night, I’ll pack us up in the morning while Jeremy takes Jonah off to play somewhere. Our last few flights have left early in the morning, which is always a rough way to start a long travel segment. I’m hoping Jonah will nap tomorrow before we pop in on Doris to say good-bye and head to the airport.When we land in London on Thursday morning, we’ll pick up our rental car and head to the lake district, about a four to five hour drive northwest. We’re staying in what appears to be a lovely, little cottage in Rydal with walking trails outside our front door and within a short walking distance of a lake. Should be a relaxing time. We’ll take walks, enjoy the villages scattered throughout the area, read, hang out in the cottage’s garden. We’re hoping to buy a modem at the airport so we have internet access at our place. We shall see.
And now to Jonah. Everything for Jonah is about cars. He pretends a milk bottle top is a steering wheel and races around the house, turning it and making zoom noises all the while. We were reading a story about nothing having to do with cars—One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish—and there was a picture of a fish in a car. “What’s that car?” Jonah exclaimed. We told him it was a fish in a car and tried to turn the page, but he insisted that we stop so he could keep looking at it. Jeremy read the line, “What a lot of…” and he paused. Jonah replied, “Cars there are!” Of course, the line is “What a lot of fish there are,” but Jonah loves the cars.If it’s not about cars, it’s about elevators. Jonah turns almost anything he can pick up into an elevator. “Eledader going up!” he exclaims. And he loves being able to push the buttons on a real elevator.
If it’s not about cars or elevators, it’s about trains. Within a matter of a day at some point in the past two weeks, he suddenly became most enchanted with trains. He’s always had a train book (The Engine that Could), but this book has taken on epic importance in his life in recent weeks. I made Jonah a little house out of an empty Kleenex box, and he turned it into a train too.
Jonah eats yogurt by himself now. This is a new development of the past week or so, and it has skyrocketed yogurt’s already-elevated standing in Jonah’s ranking of food. He loved it before, but now he absolutely loves it, hands down, more than anything. And he always asks me, “Mommy, take a pi-ture!” as he’s eating his yogurt so that I can capture the moment. He’s just started to eat his morning oatmeal on his own as well. That seems to be a bit trickier, and he keeps telling us that there are houses in his bowl (very creative kid) so is more interested in looking at it and moving it around.Jonah continues to pick up and use phrases we regularly use. “There ya go!” “It’s fine.” “This is yummy!”
“I taking the train to Kampala back. Not taking train South Africa,” Jonah said one morning at breakfast. “Why are you going to Kampala?” asked Jeremy. “To get Mr. Tato Head at Maya’s house,” Jonah replied. That’s Mr. Potato Head. Maya first introduced Jonah to ole Mr. Tato Head.
“Where A-B-C guys went?” Remember the A-B-C guys from Kampala? The ones who were fixing our air conditioner? Jonah has mentioned them a couple of times. More interestingly, Jonah has replaced the word “go” in his usual sentence of “Where XX go?” with “went” so that the sentence is now “Where XX went?” He’s obviously picked this up from the answers to his questions, since a response requires the use of “went” as in “They went home”. Jeremy and I have discussed on numerous occasions how amazing the acquisition of language is.
Jonah was looking at his playmat, which has a park on it. He was looking at it sideways and said, “The slide tipped over. … This [swing set] upside down.”As Jeremy and I talked about something or other and mentioned email in the context of our conversation, Jonah said, “I going to email Granny Doris.”
“I want to eat that one,” Jonah remarked, as he pointed to his mouth and the piece of pasta he just swallowed.
While looking at the Time Out magazine, Jonah was flipping through the pages and looking at pictures. He saw one picture and said, “This is a hotel,” and he was right. He saw a picture of some restaurant and said, “I want to eat at that reswant.”
A surprising question at the time, though one to be expected, “Where mommy’s penis go?”
“When get older, wear a watch!” Jonah said to me while wearing my watch one morning. He got this “when I get older” concept from his book of the same name in which the little critter says he’s going to wear a watch (among other things) when he gets older.“Doctor is going to put a scope in my ear,” Jonah let Jeremy know as we were walking out the door to head to the doctor. “No mouse in my ear,” Jonah later told Jeremy, after we’re returned from the doctor. I’d made a game with Jonah of our trip to the doctor, pretending that we were looking for a mouse that might have gone in through his ear. Okay, now that I write that, it sounds like it would be scary for a kid, but it was in the context of something else we were discussing and Jonah loved the idea.
“Light turned off,” said Jonah, referring to the street light outside our bedroom sliding glass door. “It did?” I asked. “Nope, it’s still on,” Jonah replied. Nope—I love that he sometimes uses that word.
While at lunch one day with Doris, Jeremy asked Jonah if he wanted to pay the bill. “No,” replied Jonah. “What do you use to pay the bill?” Jeremy asked. “Credit card!” Jonah replied. He loves handing the credit card over. Jeremy keeps trying to teach him to say, “Charge it, please!”
“I wanna sit on daddy’s lap to Skype,” Jonah said one morning after Jeremy booted up his computer. Unfortunately, we can’t Skype from here because his computer stopped working.Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Jonah was at his sliding glass door, about to unlock it. Turning down toward his room, he saw me and hurried, quickly unlocking the door, making his way out, and shouting, “I want to watch the sunset!”
While talking to Jeremy about our next destination, I said to him, “It would be nice if our next place had a garden.” Listening to me, Jonah came over, waved his arms around, pretended to turn a steering wheel, and said, “Want to go to garden with bus!” For a split second, this threw me. Then I realized he was talking about Gardens Shopping Center and the red bus where we met Dom, Rob, and Charlotte.
On the drive to Rob, Dom, and Charlotte’s house, Jonah piped up from the back, “Um, going wrong way, daddy.” Jeremy was going the right way, but Jonah apparently didn’t think so. On our way back over the hill to Camps Bay the other day, Jonah called out from the back, “Mommy, call daddy now.” He was letting me know that I should flash Jeremy on his cell phone so that he could go downstairs to our parking spot and move the chain for us to park.
Jonah has bitten Jeremy three times in the last few days. We’ve been quite clear in telling him that this is not appropriate behavior. Each time he cries after hearing the seriousness in our voices. After it happened yesterday morning, Jonah and I were sitting on the bed. He had stopped crying. Jeremy walked back in the room, and I asked Jonah, “Are you ready to get dressed?” Jonah replied, “No, I still crying.” We had to keep ourselves from laughing.When we prompt Jonah to say “thank you” to someone, we usually say to him, “Say thank you, Jonah.” He usually replies, “Thank you, Jonah.” Today for the first time, Jonah said, “Thank you, Charlotte,” when I gave him the prompt to thank Charlotte for his new little train. Go Jonah!
At the Mt. Nelson, Jonah saw a woman in a wheelchair. He turned to us and said, “That’s her stroller.” He used to ask us what “that car” is, when seeing a wheelchair.
Okay, folks, onward to the final country of our sabbatical!
Picture descriptions: Jonah scopes out the scene at the Fish Hoek playground; hanging out with Rob, Dom, and Charlotte at the Old Biscuit Mill; enjoying the grounds of Le Franschhoek Hotel & Spa; same; feeding the bunnies in Franschhoek; refusing to budge from the train tracks in Franschhoek; Franschhoek farm house where we stayed; playing with Granny Doris; view of the storm from our balcony; line drying inside our flat; Doris enjoying our Mercedes; Hout Bay wharf; Fish Hoek with Granny Doris; playing in the water at Bakoven Beach with Charlotte; taking in the sunset at Llandudno Beach; more beach time at Clifton Beach; Willie's grave; Jeremy reads the paper as Jonah enjoys his food at the Mt. Nelson Hotel; walking around the grounds of the Mt. Nelson Hotel; on the train tracks in Franschhoek; enjoying his yogurt at home; getting a ride from daddy at Llandudno Beach; hiding under our covers while daddy takes a quick nap; running around the grounds at the Mt. Nelson Hotel; Jonah's favorite place when the washing machine is spinning.
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