You can't go home again. If it means traveling with Crabtot. How true did that sound when, from Wyoming, I embarked on the Great Trek to get the Crabfamily to my far-flung hometown for the holidays.

But we made it. We took several hundred flights, skipped several time zones, switched seasons and hemispheres. We endured many thousands of miles airborne with Crabtot. And I want to say that she was especially crabby. And I want to tell you ghastly tales from the epic journey, because as you know, I don't believe in blogging about good times as a mom. But I am sorry (from a blogging perspective) to report that for the first time in her little life, Crabtot got merciful on us in transit. I mean, the trip sucked and LAWD was it ever long, but the level of tot hideousness was way lower than predicted.

True, I had my mother in law with me as well as Crabhub, and that made a massive diff. True, I had a bag of tricks from China so delightful Crabtot could not fail to be enchanted at least for three minutes of every hour. True that last-minute purchase weighing down my bag was GENIUS (beading people, BEADING!). And true that giant extra battery for the computer was worth carrying around for the additional hour of Kiki's Delivery Service on DVD. But probably in the end, the voyage went well precisely because I dreaded it so much. If you anticipate doom and drama, you might just occasionally get the opposite, even if you are one crabby mommy and your child is one crabby crabtot.

So now that we're here in mellow, miraculous, end-of-the earth Cape Town, and we've swapped minus temperatures in Wyoming for balmy summer days, my thoughts naturally turn to the return trip ahead. I'm doing that trip without Crabhub or MIL, and it fills me with doom. No way can C-tot repeat her performance in a second round of flights. Plus we gain 3 hours in the trans-Atlantic flight, which will make the middle leg of the journey 18 hours with a mere 12 to go on arrival in DC.

I have a month on which to fixate on the probable torture that looms. Being who I am, it shadows me as we frolic on beaches, track animals on safari, and  otherwise engage in the splendor that is South Africa. On the bright side, my cousin has trained as a traditional African witch doctor (okay, he's probably the only blond one but I think he knows his stuff). Perhaps he can prescribe me something homeopathic (or some ground tortoise powder) to put tot into uber-sluggish mode for the return. Or maybe I will find here some illegal-in-the-USA Tot-Xanax to pop into her Pez dispenser. A mother can only hope...

Meantime, look out for dispatches from the south, mixed in with general crabbishness on the usual topics. If you can't get enough, do visit my personal blog for more on our adventures. With that I say happy happy to those of you who do the Jesus birthday thing. We're half a day ahead of you here and desultorily preparing a seafood Xmas Eve dinner. Excuse me while I help Crabtot finish off the tree decorating. We didn't bring the Crabtot angel on this trip, but I think there's a gold wire pot scourer somewhere underneath Crabgrandma's kitchen sink...