Aug 8, 2011 | The Parenthood
As the Bear nears the dawning of the third year of his life, one of my favourite things about this stage in his development is his increasing vocabulary and communication skills. Every once in a while we have a conversation that makes me marvel at how much a tiny person understands and is able to communicate. Other times it’s his word choice or pronunciation that puts a smile on my face and a twinkle in my eye.
Like how he thinks cats say “Me-wow” and still ends every “May I …” request with a “Yes may youuuuu.”
In order to understand the following story, you need to know that we were staying in a resort near Kruger that had Vervet Monkeys — they’d come from the jungle area nearby and bypass the electric fencing by making their way through the trees. When they came for a visit, their watchful little eyes were ready to seize an opportunity to slip through an open window and raid a cupboard or ruin an unattended meal.
Our place had a balcony to the great outdoors and little guys like this one were watching in the grass below…
{Don’t let that innocent face fool you…he’s up to monkey business.}
Recently a conversation took place between the Hubs and the Bear that fell into the delightful twinkle-in-my-eye-marvelling-Mama category, and it went a lil’ something like this:
Scene: The Baby has two dummies. The orange one is missing and was last seen in the hands of the elder brother. The interrogation begins.
Hero Hubs: Bear, what did you do with your brother’s dummy?
The Bear: {unintelligible mumbles and squeals}
HH: Bear, you were the last one to have Blake’s dummy. What did you do with it?
Bear: A monkey came and grab it.
HH: Now I know that this little monkey (gesturing at the Bear) grabbed it, but what happened to it?
Bear: I drop it and kick it into da garden. And monkey came and grabbed it.
We almost found the story a little hard to believe, and we haven’t been able to stop laughing about it. I asked the Bear to tell me what happened to Blake’s dummy again later, and this was the response:
The Bear: I just kick into garden and a monkey grab.
Me: Did that really happen or are you telling a story?
Bear: Happened.
So friends, somewhere in the bushveld far far away, a vervet monkey is up a tree, and she is using the first pacifier our second son ever used to soothe her baby monkey to sleep.
How’s that for monkey business?
xCC
Aug 7, 2011 | Baby Photos
I couldn’t share the most recent photographic celebrations of the Tank making it another month with you while we were in the Bush. Did that sentence make sense? I think there’s a misplaced modifier or some kind of ambiguity somewhere. Let’s move on. Our connection to these world wide internets was a little dodgey, and feisty, and crunchy, and if I had the time I’d throw in a few other adjectives that don’t really help explain the matter but are fun to say.
Doesn’t feisty break that i before e rule?
But we’re now back in Bloemfontein, {read BLOOM-fuhn-tane} safe and sound, with four little green bars telling us our little USB modem can now upload photos in less time than in takes to make a Hero Hubs Latte. Whoo to the Hoo.
So here’s our little star, proud of his five-month achievement.
Or maybe he’s proud of the hand-me-down corduroy cargos from H&M he’s sporting. (Thanks x 2, Sarah Mac!)
I asked him which it was, but he looked at me like I was crazy.
So we moved on to the task of keeping him smiling
which we’re discovering is not too difficult with this little guy.
Even when we’ve been in the car for ages looking for animals and he does a big numero dos all over himself and his poor Gammy, and I take ages to complete the task of changing him because I keep pausing to look out the window at all the elephants, this seems to be the permanent disposition:
Thanks for five months of sheer joy, wee Tank!
Good News! HH is busy tidying and cropping and super-dee-duperfying the photos we grabbed in the Bush! And when I say “we” I mean I think I took one photo of an elephant’s rear, and the rest was his handiwork. But I still get to share them here, isn’t that ace?
A carefully narrated game drive through the bush complemented with photography par excellence is on its way to you!
And did I tell you we’re leaving on Tuesday for the beautiful Drakensberg (a delightful mountainous world heritage site here in SA — I’ll tell ya more later) to belatedly celebrate our four-year anniversary? (Yes, both boys are coming.) Yippee!
Does anyone have a laundry wand I can borrow to wave at our suitcases?
xCC
Aug 5, 2011 | South Africa
It has been one magical and special week with Goo-Goo and Gammy in the bushveld. Our visits to Kruger National Park were full of fantastic sightings, and HH of course got a ton of beautiful photos that I can’t wait to share with you!
We’re heading off today, passing through Joburg on our way back to Bloemfontein, which incidentally, I recently realised I constantly talk about but have never explained to you how to pronounce. So you’re probably reading that word and feeling annoyed, if you’re anything like me. {Um, maybe not?} In case you are, it’s pronounced BLOOM-fuhn-tane — that last syllable rhymes with rain and Spain, and mainly the plain, of course.
Ooh, and in case you’re wondering about “bushveld” that sounds like bush-felt when the locals say it. It generally refers to uncultivated land in Southern Africa.
With the busy schedule, the slightly more challenging internet circumstances, and the desire to rest, I haven’t shared too much of this journey with you, yet. But I’m planning to invite you along next week, so that you can experience the African bush right along with us.
In the meantime, here’s one little “Safari” lesson for starters. Originally used as a hunting term, the “Big Five” is a term that refers to the animals people most hope to see while viewing game in the wild in South Africa. The Big Five animals are lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and buffalo. They’re still hunted, but now most often shot with a camera!
We had the delightful privilege of seeing four of the big five on this visit, which included three very special sightings of what is typically the most elusive animal among the Big Five. Can you guess which animal we spotted three times?
And can you guess which one we missed?
I’ll leave you with a photo of the Bear, who also enjoyed a visit to a game reserve (with G-pa!) when he was the Tank’s age. Time flies!
Tank is leaving the Bush in that outfit today. We are going to miss it here!
xCC
Aug 1, 2011 | South Africa
It was over a year ago when we last had one magical day in Kruger National Park where we saw four of the big five. You’ve may have seen some of the photos:
I’d share more but the internet’s a-strugglin’.
I am very very happy that we are back again, for several reasons.
First, we’re enjoying a holiday with HH’s folks and that’s a special treat all on its own. (And they have provided the wonderful accommodation!)
Second, we’re back in the bush staying near Kruger National Park…whoo-hoo! {Thanks to telling myself to enjoy the holiday, and the poor internet connection, I haven’t updated on you that fact before now.}
Third, I love going on game drives and looking for animals. I feel special when I point something out and HH says, “Good spot sweetheart.”
Fourth, I was spending some time reading my Bible and praying out on the balcony our first day here and a troop of vervet monkeys went by. SWEET!
Fifth, and extra special, the last time we were here looking for game, things went kind of like this:
Something like this would be outside the Bear’s window.
Bear! Look, it’s a baboon! Bear! Look out your window!
Bear!
BEAR!!!
Look that way!
He. has. no. clue.
But we had our first day out yesterday, and this time around, he is spotting the elephants, giraffes and zebras very successfully. He’s still not particularly good at listening and looking where you point, and he’s still not particularly impressed with how cool it is to see these beautiful and massive ellies in the wild…but hey, it’s improvement.
So, if you don’t hear from me for a couple of days, please blame it on the poor internet connection. We’ll be back in Bloem before too long, just in time for another adventure I’m looking forward to telling you about soon!
In the meantime, with love from the bushveld,
xCC
Jul 28, 2011 | Scotland, Stories
Six years ago today I boarded a plane in Atlanta with my big brother. Since we’d booked our tickets separately, we weren’t seated together — he was in the row in front of me in a bulkhead seat. I decided to ask the interesting character of a lady beside me if she would be willing to switch seats with my brother so that we could sit together. With the extra leg room and a little bit more space, it seemed like a no-brainer.
She turned to me, and with such poise and calm I wouldn’t have been more surprised if her teeth had fallen out in my lap, she answered:
“Absolutely not.”
Besides the surprising answer, the manner in which she responded left me so aghast I just quietly turned to stare at the back of the seat in front of me. I sat still and quiet long enough that I think remorse got the better of her, and she eventually turned to me again and said,
“Well you can at least read the paper or something.”
Ten or fifteen extremely uncomfortable minutes later, the guy sitting in front of her (beside my brother) realised his TV was broken and ended up being bumped up to business class. I then had the pleasure of moving up a row, just in time to avoid the interesting lady’s evening routine, which included changing to sleeping attire in the restroom and carefully putting her waist-length hair in a humongous bun directly on top of her head.
That flight was bound for London, and a day later my brother and I were on a train to Edinburgh, where another surprise awaited us. After a warm morning and a good breakfast in London, we moseyed on over to King’s Cross train station, and I was dressed in jeans, a t-shirt and flip-flops.
We arrived in Edinburgh that afternoon, some friends of mine doing us a great favour by bringing the majority of the luggage up with them by car that evening. My landlord, David, a wonderful gent who’d soon become a great friend, met us at the train station.
{A view from the School of Divinity in Edinburgh}
As we waited and looked for David at the train station, I realised all my warm clothes were in those suitcases coming up from London, and though it was the 29th of July, I was convinced that the rain falling outside was freezing and would be turning to snow at any minute.
After settling in to the temporary digs in Gorgie where I’d be staying for my first month in Auld Reekie, we turned up the heating and went out to the pub across the street to enjoy some impressively poor renditions of Oasis’s Wonderwall while waiting for the flat to warm up.
We returned to a freezing cold flat, and figured out that the gas had run out. I knew nothing about topping up the gas. I knew nothing about the five pounds of emergency credit available if I’d pushed the right button. I just knew it was cold, I hadn’t bought bedding yet, and it was going to be a long night.
While I pulled on half the clothes in my suitcase, my friend Julie was sleeping in the other room, and decided to boil the kettle and then cuddle it on the couch to try to keep warm through the evening.
{Warning: Don’t try that at home.}
The next morning was the beginning of life in Edinburgh: trips to the big Tesco for the necessities, getting denied a bank account, getting caught in the rain without an umbrella, getting denied a phone contract, getting caught in the rain without an umbrella again, and catching the bus headed in the wrong direction.
It was also the beginning of discovering what I’ll forever hold in my heart as the most beautiful city in Europe, finding a little shop that served Chocolate Soup, exploring the fantastic finds waiting to be had in charity shops, and studying for a Master’s Degree (and half a PhD) at a university so exquisitely located, I never once left the Divinity School without savouring the incredible view — Edinburgh Castle to my left, Princes Street below, the Firth of Forth, broody in the distance, sun streaming onto the yellow rapeseed meadows of Fife on the other side.
Those days marked the beginnings of these six years of life, thousands of miles away from the place that never stopped feeling like home, though I tried hard to set up shop wherever I was. And though this season has been full of good surprises, and bad ones, it seems I could’ve taken note of what was to come in the foreshadows of those first few days.
Though that simple moment of surprise on the plane made me think the chances of enjoying my brother’s company on the nine-hour flight was no longer a possibility, beside the closed door was an open window, just a little further along. And though the heat-less night in Gorgie was a tough start, the memories my brother and I share from Robertson’s Pub and Julie hugging the kettle make the inconvenience worthwhile.
Indeed these six years have gone rather differently in many ways from how I expected when I boarded that first flight, but I’ve continuously seen glory in the triumphs and the failings, especially in the times where things happened differently from how I hoped or expected.
Among the many lessons tucked into my heart for the journey home, another I’m holding onto is the realization that it’s easy to get discouraged when things aren’t going according to plan, but we can hold onto faith that even disappointments and trials can work out for good, when we love our Creator and are willing to wait on Him.
So hold on to hope, whatever you’re facing today. No matter where you are on the journey of life, tomorrow is pregnant with possibility, and it’s an adventure that’s just beginning.
xCC
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