After Duncan has done his night time routine with Grace I go in for our cuddle, favourite part of the day and singing ritual.  In the last few weeks Grace requests a "back scratch" while you sing to her.  Our repertoire of songs has increased from  just Silent Night, Jesus love me and Amazing Grace to Rudolph the red nose reindeer, Jesus loves the little children, Mr Sun, and Raindrops keep falling on my head.  In general I limit the songs to 3 or 4 otherwise I could be singing for a very long time.

Grace jumped a lot today. She woke up and stared out the window at her trampoline, and was out jumping in her nightie this morning. At the end of the day the last thing she did before bath time was to jump on the trampoline.

Grace got to enjoy a lot of things that she loves today. A trip to Stodels to see the animals, sushi for lunch, playing in water and on her jungle gym, jumping on the trampoline that Gogo & Gramps bought for her, and spending time with Gogo & Gramps through all of it.

Gogo and Gramps arrived today and Grace has been loving seeing them. Gogo fell asleep on the couch, so Gramps told Grace to leave her alone and not disturb her. Grace was really good about it and was quiet and did not disturb Gogo, but she did keep looking back to check if Gogo was still asleep. The moment Gogo opened her eyes the first thing out of Grace's mouth was, "Morning Gogs!"

Gogo and Gramps doing obligatory swing duty.

Grace is in her new room with just one sleep left before Gogo and Gramps arrive. We have been shifting our house (well, our furniture and stuff that is) around today and doing some long overdue spring cleaning in the process. I do not think we have had a proper spring clean since before Grace was born, so we are enjoying the catharsis of the process.

Grace has always been a great little helper but in the last few weeks she wants to help with everything.  Today after doing some grocery shopping she unpacked the bag while I was busy with something else and when I later asked her where she had put the bananas she promptly replied "in the cub" – meaning the cupboard.

Grace loves watching videos of The Cousin Who Shall Not Be Named, so she always gets much joy when her Aunt Annie posts new ones. One of the videos that Grace really loves is of a part of a dance/movement class that Annie runs. Annie tells the children to, “Tap your toe,” then later, “Faaaaast, jump!” Every now and then Grace bursts into “Tap toe, tap toe,” and does her routine.

Since Grace squished her finger in the door she has wanted to have a plaster on her finger. After two days under a plaster the wound looked, well, terrible – all white and mushy. With little prospect of not putting a plaster on her finger we applied some parent brain and devised a plan which involved putting some Wecesin powder onto the wound and putting the plaster on her finger in a different spot – one which was not over the wound at all, allowing it to breathe.

 Our decorations after baking in the oven for a few hours

While the decorations were drying Grace and I went off to buy some paint and ribbon and found, to Grace's delight some sand art. So post nap we spent about an hour completing this sand art picture.  I was amazed that she actually stayed focused for that time.

Our Sand Art Picture

I would have thought after an hour of sand art Grace would want to run around outside, but instead chose to paint some of our decorations

Some of our completed decorations

Grace has been camera averse lately….well, it is a bit of a love-hate relationship. Today Grace and I were sitting and looking out the back door, so Donné got the camera to capture the moment. Grace caught a glimpse of the camera and said, "No photo! No photo, no photo." Donné had managed to snap a shot, and after the three "No photo's," the next word out of her mouth was "See!" She hopped up, looked at the photo and then ran to sit down for more photos.