Weeks 2 and 3 with the out laws

So Opa and Oma have now gone home and I've waded through all the great photos (which is always the most time consuming part of updating this blog) so now I can tell you what we got up to.We went and stayed with my sister and Collin in Brits once Benedikt got back from Germany as we were doing a triathlon near to them on the Sunday and Opa and Oma were booked as the babysitters.
Us athletes in the meantime got up at 5am for our 5:30 departure and headed groggily over to Buffelspoort Dam for the triathlon. My sister, Lesley, and I did the ultra distance as a team again while Benedikt did the sprint distance individually. His first REAL triathlon! The 2 we did in Kenya can't count because the swim was in a pool!

And whaddya know, we podiumed! Even after I lost like million places doing my bit, we still came in as the 3rd team and first ladies team overall. Woohoo!!
So it was all good. But I will never do that kind of thing again without training for it! I hadn't cycled that distance, nor done any significant hills in about 8 months, basically since last year's Tour de France! We are still taking this baby making thing seriously and I have become a lazy housewife ensuring I remain Fat and Fertile :)


So last weekend we packed up the car to the brim and headed off to Sterkfontein Dam at stayed at a resort called Qwantani. We got there around 6pm on the Friday evening so had a chilled braai at our chalet. Nico was really good during the 3 hour car journey. I'd installed a million toddler apps on my iPhone so that kept him entertained for hours


On the Sunday Benedikt, Irene and I went for a swim in the actual dam which was DIVINE. Very cold but very clear water. We went and checked out the boats at the dock, visited the animal farm and guess what? Played on the trampoline for another million hours. It was all in all a lovely weekend getaway in this beautiful country.
By the end of Opa and Oma's visit Nico was saying 'Op' which was cause for a major celebration! Opa REALLY tried hard to get that word out of Nico. So I miss them being here because now I have to look after Nico every afternoon again! But Benedikt and I are enjoying being on our own in the house this week I must say. (My dad is currently on holiday)


Some quality time with Oma and Opa:

Oma and Opa's first week. PLUS Nico's first bike race!

So my out laws are here for 3 weeks. Not to see Benedikt and I of course, but to spend as much time as possible with their beloved grandson. Its great for me as they do SO much around the house and need very little looking after.... and they take Nico and play with him the moment he is home from school and has had his lunch time sleep. So I am free to work or shop or bake (a new hobby of mine?!! All vegan healthy goodies of course) And my Dad is on hand to be tour guide and take them on day trips. Perfect!
Benedikt of course buggers of to work each day and leaves us to it. AND he even had to go to Germany for 4 days for work during his parents visit! He is lucky I get on with my parents in law :) He gets back tomorrow. And then we go away for the weekend. He doesn't deserve a rest!
Their first weekend here we made them babysit of course while we went out cycling. Then we went to a great place called Tres Jollie for an early dinner on the Saturday.
Then on Sunday we went for a lovely picnic at the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens:


Nico wasn't really himself that weekend though and on Monday he had a temperature. He hadnt been sleeping or eating well either, so we took him to the doctor and she discovered he had an ear infection! Poor little mite. So he was put on anti biotics much to my disappointment. His first time! I bet its all that toxic animal food that his father feeds him that made him weak! So Oma and Opi were on sick child duty for the next 2 days. Glad they were here as I had a web site to finish!


Then next up was Nico's Bike-athlon at school. Heinz and Benedikt kept calling it a race. And told Nico he has to VIN. Heinz even made me write No 1 on his bike!

Gaga's visit

So Granny (aka Gaga in Nico's language) has just been up here for 2 weeks from the western cape. We did quite a lot with the mother but also made her sit at home and babysit or cross stitch a fair amount. She is excellent at both :)
We all miss her already, Nico especially, as Gaga was such a good play mate. My mum has been a teacher all her life (of little kids) and she has always done loads of childcare. So knows how to stimulate and encourage all right developments in a kid. That, and the fact that she loves her grandson to death and can't get enough of him, makes her the perfect granny!
Gaga would take Nico every afternoon and entertain him which was great as I could carry on working. We also got plenty of shopping done for my mum in between outings as she has very limited shops in Swellendam!



Our Gautrain trip:
So on tuesday the 21st of Feb, my mum, sis and I went on the Gautrain. We got on at Rhodesfield (which is very close to the airport) and got off 13 minutes later in Sandton. How convenient, doll. (sandton keugel accent) So we had lunch in the Nelson Mandela square then did a spot of shopping in the mall. We got the 17:15 train back and were back home by 17:40! Amazing really. Doing that drive at that time would take 2 hours instead of the 25 minutes it took us, door to door. I was SO impressed with the stations and the trains and the ease of getting a ticket, how helpful and friendly the staff were - the organisation of it all seems brilliant. We couldnt believe we were in SA when we got to Sandton station - there were people from all walks of life, fast walkers, slow walkers, silly people (us) taking photos, trains and movement and buzz everywhere. We just needed the London buskers and we could have been transported to the Underground!


Drakes Farmyard:


On my mum's last day we went to an awesome vegetarian/vegan restaurant in Bryanston called Fruits and Roots. I spent a FORTUNE in the health store. Wow, I could buy everything in there! I bought: kelp powder, stevia, healthy animal pasta for Nico, coconut oil, quinoa, bragg's amino liquid (soy sauce alternative), nutrional yeast, carob cookies and more. Then we had a vegan burger, a vegan wrap and a vegan pizza for our delicious lunch!
That night we went with Benedikt for sushi at our favourite sushi bar nearby... more yummy stuff

Tri's and braais

So life is good here in SA. My mum is up from the Cape for a visit and Nico is now officially settled at school. They said it would take 3 weeks and at exactly 3 weeks to the day he started really having fun at school, joining in with the others, and not crying when I dropped him off, getting involved in the baking and the art activities, and generally not just gluing himself to his teacher.
He has a new teacher, Kim, she is lovely. She looks a little like my sister, who is now Nico's second mum, so he LOVES Teacher kim. And she LOVES Nico! She really has taken him under her wing. Apparently she is like the pied piper at school, with 3 little ones: Nico, Cara (her daughter) and another little girl, Katja, following her everywhere.
He also doesn't need his lion anymore. For his first 3 weeks he dragged it around with him everywhere. It was real comfort for him at school. It was so cute seeing him clutching his lion in a strangle hold! He does love it. He growls every time he picks it up. And he even hugs and kisses it. But thankfully, he can easily live without it.
So I am happy because it was horrible dropping off Nico every morning and he just WAILED and tried to cling to me. Now he is a happy school boy, he even says 'school is cool' (if you know his language)

Nico has also developed quite a bit in these last few weeks. Physically and mentally. He now rides his motorbike like a pro, whizzing around and taking the corners at speed. He can swing from things now, so holds his own weight. He climbs EVERYTHING and anything and has had some falls at school apparently. He is talking a lot more and repeats things with much more clarity. He says 'please' or 'bitte' after we insist he says it, instead of his usual, demanding 'more'.

He is also trying VERY hard to jump off the ground with both feet... he just can't quite work out the co-ordination. One leg goes up and the other follows after, but he's yet to do them together. He tries for about 10 minutes though. Which is REALLY long for a toddler to do anything! Soon after the jumping game he will turn round and round and round and round on the spot making himself awfully dizzy. These games are often before bath time, in what we call his happy (crazy) hour. I think he gets extra excited cos Dad is home by then.

Another funny thing he does is call Mahindi 'Mahindi', but he calls Horse, 'Bad Girl'. Just shows how often we are shouting at Horse!

Nico is absolutely key befok. He is always wanting to play with them and hold them and try every key in every door. His obsession is getting very annoying. He goes around saying 'KKKKKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYY' and then 'KEEEEEEEEYYYYYY DOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRR' and then 'CAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR KEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYY'. And apparently you are to drop everything and help him get keys in the locks. My mum bought up a whole bunch of random spare keys so at least now we don't have to worry about him losing every key for the house.

Our nightmare move from Kenya!

Before I continue on our South African chapter, I must just write about our Move From Hell that we experienced during our last 3 days in Nairobi. We had been forced to use a certain move company because Benedikt's new company had ties with them. Right from the beginning this made me anxious as I know how many things can go wrong if you don't have the right people helping you.
So the packers from said company arrived on the Wednesday, 2 hours late of course. And they started packing. SLOWLY. Joseph, their leader who had come 2 weeks prior to do an assessment on the house assured me that they would finish that day with the packing. Looking at the guys doing the cutting, wrapping, boxing, and taping I was like, WHATEVER.
They were like snails. And there was only 4 guys. Granted, yes, we had sold 50% of our stuff, but we still had enough goods to fill a 20 foot container, so it was a lot. So at the end of the day he admitted they would need to come back the following day. So again, on Thursday, they arrived LATE, and slowly got started on packing the remaining items. Benedikt and I, during those 2 days packed the entire upstairs contents ourselves! Come Friday, they still had about 20% of things to pack/wrap and it was 12 noon before they even arrived! This was our last day in Kenya and we were getting just a tad bit stressed.
Friday, being D-day, meant that we had a few friends dropping by to say goodbye. Plus various people picking up my car, the microwave, our bed and its accompaniments, our fridge and our alien ID's (these are very useful for visitors who want to pay resident rates!) respectively. So at any given time, there was a few extra people there besides the packers. Plus our housekeeper and nanny, who were both GREAT in helping us with cleaning, sorting and looking after Nico. (Nico hardly slept a wink that day as his room was packed up, poor thing)
So, on top of all that choas, my good friend Eva, who was moving into our house, who HAD to be out of her house that day, had to move in! So her people were there dropping off things to the garden and installing her fridge and washing machine and dstv etc. Basically as soon as we declared a room empty, she would move stuff in. So ZERO turn around time! And I'd say at the peak of the chaos, there were about 25 people at our place moving bits of furniture in different directions!
So crunch time came and it was time to pack the trucks. Which was a last minute change as our move company (or rather the group of useless people who calls themselves a company) told us on Friday morning that they couldn't load our container directly and that they would take our stuff to the airport via truck and load the container there. Without us being present at the re-loading. ie. Half our stuff would go missing when they moved it from the trucks to the container and the other half of it would be packed so badly it would break during transport. To me, those were now a given.
I felt immediate sadness for all the personal effects we were bound to lose. Like things my granny gave me, or photo albums and books. And all the special items we'd bought in Kenya. The things like our crockery and sofa and rugs and camping equipment is easy to replace and we have a good insurance. But its the personal things like wedding presents and framed photos that we will be sad about. We will only really know how much they messed up when we get to Zurich in a few months time and take our stuff out of storage. We are not going to think of it between now and then, its pointless.

So anyway, it was time to load our stuff, with air freight going off first. So I took photos of the air freight items and wrote a list of what was going. As they started loading the truck we asked where the packing list was... they pointed to me and said she is writing it down and that they would get a copy. We were like WHAT?!!!!!!!!!
I was hand writing on a random piece of paper and they wanted a COPY?!! And we were to write our OWN packing lists?!!! How completely dodgy and unprofessional. We were shocked actually!!
So for the next 2 hours, Benedikt and I had to be there as they loaded the trucks and write down (in duplicate) what was going on, with its number and contents. What shambles.
Nico chose that moment to wake up, we couldn't blame him, with all the noise and no curtains or anything in his room. So there we were, trying to keep close tabs on what was being loaded, while keeping an eye on Nico, and facilitating all the people picking up beds and cars etc. Nico managed to find a red felt tip pen at the same time and draw on all the walls!!
WHAT A NIGHTMARE.
And I am convinced we won't see our belongings again.