March 25, 2025
This was probably our first “normal” day. Woke up, breakfast, home schooling, park hunting, quick pool time, then dinner out. Nothing really touristy accomplished, just normal living.
Lenny was more into home school today then his face shows. We wrote some postcards that we had bought at the aquarium which got him excited(curious how long those take to show up). He also remembered the word “Go” but the others not so much. We spent some more time today on rhyming words and what they look like written.
After surviving another day of home schooling we were off to try and find Greenpoint Park!
We parked about a mile away from Greenpoint because we were torn between Greenpoint Park and riding the Ferris wheel at the V&A water front. The boys were not happy with the ensuing walk all the way to the park. It was very windy but we eventually made it and Lenny getting to see his first lighthouse of the trip brightened him up, even though we could not climb it. He claims we will see 50 on the whole trip, Kayleen guesses more like 20.
That brightening soon devolved into a full meltdown when Ollie challenged me to a race. We made it a relay so Lenny could be involved but as soon as Ollie left him in the dust Lenny started to cheat. Lenny viewed the punishment for cheating as unacceptable and started crying, yelling, punching, kicking, and trying to stomp on toes…
Once Kayleen calmed him down to a 5 out of 10 we went across the street to get out of the sun and have some gelato. The shop owner picked Lenny up so he could see the flavors, which Len loved. A few minutes later he gave Len a second cup of the other flavor, strawberry, that he had been interested in as his second choice. Of course to Ollie this was a great injustice so we let him have some of the one Kayleen and I were sharing, pistachio. Then out of no where Lenny let Ollie finish one of his cups! A kind act for his brother, we were in shock.
We made our way to the actual Greenpoint Park! What we had been at before was just a separate park by the lighthouse. Greenpoint was very impressive, Cape Town’s version of Central Park. We have to go back and explore it more. There are tons of sports fields, ponds, a biodiversity walk, and very cool playgrounds scatter all throughout. Kayleen parked herself on a swing, as the boys started to play, only to be quickly reprimanded by park security that the playground was for children 12 and under…. No fun for you Kayleen!
We started the long walk back to the car and decided to let the kids have some shoulder rides to make it less torturous for us all. Kayleen brought out the biltong for everyone to try, better version of beef jerky, which was a hit eventually…
First Lenny ate some but then decided he did not like and it so he spit it out, right onto the top of my head. Then he tried to wipe it off for me but really just rubbed it in. I was pulling chewed pieces of meat out of my hair for the next few hours. Later he decided he did actually like and it ate quite a bit more…
Ollie has started to notice the massive disparity wealth, the results of apartheid. He makes a lot of observations and asks questions that are not easy to answer. “Gosh why are there so many poor people? I really hate it.” and “Is it fair there are so many poor people in the world?”
We made it back to the car and headed to the yoga studio to drop Kayleen off then the boys and I went home for a quickly nightly cannonball session before we met back up for dinner. We went back to Maria’s, where we had lunch a few days before. The food was great and the kids held it together even though it got to be close to 8PM before we left.
The boys can’t get enough of trying to scare Kayleen with a little plastic snake I brought from home. Will keep posting the videos of their attempted scares.
