But you can't make her swim. Which can be a mite frustrating when you've brought her 20-odd thousand miles to the magic ocean of Haga Haga, South Africa, a remote and ridiculously gorgeous African beach you haven't seen for decades, in a hamlet that remains as unchanged and pristine as it was when you were Crabtot's age.

I've long fantasized about bringing Crabtot to this spot. She makes the fifth generation of my family to spend a happy tot-vacay here, swimming in rock pools, jumping in shallow waves, and making sandcastles. That is, if she'd quit whining and take the plunge.

To me this place, where we've spent the past week, feels as far-flung and iconic as childhood itself. To Crabtot it's just where she is right now, and not necessarily where she wants to be. So while I had it in my head that she would be in her element on arrival, she spent her first days hanging back from the ocean, whining about shell collecting, and being generally "gormless," to use a favorite family word. LAWD can that kid whinge and moan! And just when I thought I'd rather take an ice pick to my own eardrums rather than have to hear Tot say "let's go home!" one more time, she suddenly got her "sea legs." As in, she decided to jump in and enjoy herself. That's Crabtot swimming in "Mermaid's Pool" where Crabgreat-aunt and Crabgran (also pictured here) learned to swim. It's a tidal pool set back from the ocean, deep enough for a kid to swim in, with flat rocky ledges making natural steps for sitting and jumping.

Every morning and evening we look for urchin shells, or "nuns' beads." Crabtot likes to paint them and make jewelry for her doll, Edie. We've been paddling in the soupy-lovely lagoon, which is framed by scattered driftwood and protected by high hills of tangled bush. As one who lives far from her roots, I've always thought it important to give my kid a taste of the traditional South African holidays my family has always taken. For Crabtot and me, this means traveling about as far from our current home as it's possible to go. I doubt we'll get back to Haga Haga in future years of her childhood but I'm glad we've done it at least once. Even though I've had to endure a lot of petulance in the process.

I doubt I'm the first mom who's spent thousands of miles and banknotes trying to give her tot a respite in nature, only to find the child moaning about home and wishing to play with gravel in the parking lot behind the beach! It's annoying. But when I give it further thought, even the whiny aspect of Crabtot's first days here connects her to family ritual: Before returning to Haga Haga for this epic voyage, I recalled myself so completely in love with the place and charmed by everything we did when I came here as a kid. We stayed in a shack with no electricity and bathed my kid sister in a plastic tub. But, romantic as the memory seems now, I highly doubt I enjoyed it all at the time; if I dig a little deeper I recall fighting with my siblings throughout those car treks from Cape Town and being annoyed with my parents for never taking us to more happening holidays destinations where the digs were fancier and there were mobs of other children to hang with. Indeed, crabby mommies were once crabby kids. So, whining in paradise? —Just a part of Crabtot's family tradition!

This is our last African dispatch and if we can survive the trek we'll soon be back home, where Crabtot can then proceed to miss Africa after missing Wyoming. Yes, the grass is always greener for Crabtot. Wait, doesn't that remind you of someone...?

Any last tips for dealing with a transatlantic whiner for 36 hours? Ah, but you'd whine too if you were leaving this behind: