It was the last swimming lesson for the term today, and the last month or so has been going really well. Grace has been loving swimming with Charlene and been making huge progress. Today was one of those wow days for me. The first thing I was really impressed with was Grace floating on her back on her own. In fact, she floated across the entire length of the pool on her back. I actually thought Charlene had been helping her, but she was just floating all by herself.

"Grace, if you try to grab that off my plate again then you can't have the chicken bones." Sometimes the things we negotiate with are unconventional….in this case Grace has decided that it is lots of fun to pick the meat off the chicken bones.

When we dropped Keren off at the airport the elephant outside the door was getting a fresh spray paint.

So when we were going to fetch Keren again, Grace was very excited to see the elephant.

Donné thought it might be better to just collect Keren from the drop & go, so she suggested this to Grace.

“I *have* to see the elephant, please mommy.” And with that emphatic plea, we went to see the elephant.

From having none at all, Grace developed a whole army of imaginary friends today….or at least a Micky Mouse Clubhouse worth of friends. This morning, Micky, Minnie, Donald, Daisy & Goofy all came over for Minnie Mouse's birthday (for which there was much cake baking). It is fascinating how suddenly there are these "real" people in her world. She holds them in her hand and takes them around with her.

Today was our monthly get together and we decided to take advantage of the beautiful sunny winter day and headed to Green Point Park for a picnic, tea and play time in the park. Yesterday I told Grace that we were going to see our friends and she kept on calling it  "Pink Point Park."  In the car on our way to the park she kept on saying that we were going to Pink Point Park and I kept on correcting her.  At one stage she turned around and said "Blue Point Park" with a very naughty look on her face – I got the message after that and let her call it whatever she wanted to.

After reading the post office story and a suggestion from me, Grace decided that it would be awesome to write some letters to take to the post office to post. So write she did, mommy, daddy, Keren, Spicey, Apple, Coco and more, and today we got to go and post them.

Grace has never really been aware of the cold. If anything, she has always tended to be hot, but this winter she has started to notice the cold. There have been a couple of times that she has surprised us by saying she is cold, but today highlighted a classic case. You know that feeling when you get into a cold car and your top pulls up just a little bit exposing your back to the cold of the seat? Grace got to experience that today. We put her into the car and by the time I had moved around to my door she looked horrified and was saying, "Cold back, cold back!" A small adjustment to her top and all was well.

One of the stories we have been reading is, "A trip to the post office." A little girl, Betsy, writes a letter to Grandma and goes to drop it off at the post office. When the letter finally gets to Grandma it is signed, "Hugs & kisses, Betsy."

“Where are you going Grace?”
“Just reversing ‘cos I parked too close.”