Day 2 - Saturday

This morning I was woken by Ingrid's Blackberry playing some kind of buddhist chime alarm.  It was a reminder for her to go to the gym.  Instead, she is in the bedroom doing Qigong while I am googling a recipe for green papaya salad.  Wren is lying facedown in the bed doing his best impersonation of Sleeping Child.   Ok.  He is asleep.

Frost is on Day 2 of only 7 hours sleep.  I think it comes from sleeping in the room with the grandparents (who rise with the birds) and having no curtains on his east facing sun-room.  If the sun, or a Blackberry, doesn't get him at dawn then the hadedah ibis do - flying over in the light-crepuscule and honking their loud hee-haws.   Even the mourning doves sound loud on jet lag.   Frost is full of joy at his freedom in a large house with many people.  He is inherently social and also enjoys access to milo cereal and mnet.  I am going to take him for a ride on his new (rented) bike soon.

Now its 8.20am and David has already headed off for a run, Orion and Ansellia are asleep (Orion seems to sleep all day, on and off, and has hair like Owen Wilson forming dreds) and Dad left with the Hadedah's to be first on the beachwood golf course (although we have since heard, via Blackberry, that he has a flat tyre and his return time is uncertain.)

A woolynecked stork,
like the one we saw.

This morning, I am going to be making this green papaya salad for the lunch menu.  I am also going to stalk around the garden with the binoculars to get started on my bird list.  After years abroad in lands where birds are different and more elusive, I have forgotten my South African birds and could only identify mouse birds, doves and hadedahs for Wren.    Wren shouts "the mouse flew by the window!" when he sees birds passing.

"Look, hadedah's on the roof", I pointed out to Wren as we drove by with Dad on the way to Pick-n-Pay hypermarket.

Dad pulled the car to a complete stop in the middle of the road (nobody was behind us although cars had to go around us as he reversed up the road for a better view) because I was wrong - the birds were a couple of Woolynecked storks.

Dad has given me the bird list for Mkuzi game reserve so that I can review the birds we may see at Umfolozi but I fear he doesn't realize that I need to go back to A for Avocet and B for Barbet.

Frost has already seen monkeys (when he went golfing with Dad yesterday) and Wren hopes to see one soon although everyone else finds them less charming.  Apparently they eat birds eggs, steal fruit and mess everything up.

Wren stirs.  The Mommy-Day begins (at 8.45am!! woo hoo).