Last night the strangest thing happened while Grace was sleeping. She vomited while she was sleeping which I discovered when I went to check on her before going to bed. She just kept on sleeping and this morning was totally fine. No signs of anything yesterday, and no signs of anything today.

One of our affectionate names for Grace is Noodles. Just before supper tonight her hair was hanging in her face and Donné was trying to get her to fetch an Alice band to keep it out of her face.
Donné says, "Go and get an Alice band to keep your hair out of you face – I can't see you."

Grace responds, "Don't call me Can't See You, call me Noodles!

Grace has been quite difficult when we collect her from school for the last while. It's either because the wrong person came to fetch her, or because she doesn't want to go home. The words moaning, screaming and crying come to mind.

Today she gave Donné a hard time and I was chatting to her about it at home.

D: Grace, what's the problem with mommy coming to fetch you?
G: I don't like mommy.
D: that's a very serious thing to say. What makes you say that?
G: mommy gives me smacks.

Not more than 10 minutes later Donné sits down for lunch and Grace says, "Mommy, will you be my best friend? We can be best friends for-ever."

One of our rules is that there is no singing at the dinner table, so that we can all eat our food without being blasted away by the skeleton song, or at the moment, "Slippery fish."

So Grace is singing and we remind her of the rule….she carries on. We tell her again with some consequence if she does not stop. She stops for a moment and then starts saying, "Slippery fish, slippery fish…" "Grace, stop singing," to which she replies, "I'm not singing, I'm talking." Eish, this one is getting too clever for herself.

The Drennan boys

Eli is a really smiley baby. You just have to talk to him, and he'll give a big gummy grin.

What is the difference between a story and a lie?

We tell stories all the time, whether it is just an account of some happenings in our day, or a grand retelling of a funny story with extra emphasis added for effect. We get to exercise our imagination telling stories. Imaginary friends are a nice example – without the story the friends would not even exist. Stories entertain and convey knowledge

But what makes lies different from stories? The intent of a lie is to manipulate, to influence people by deception to obtain some goal.

Grace has had two interesting stories in the last couple of days. She had some paint on the back of her shirt recently and when we asked about it she said someone had bumped her with a brush. Okay, sounds reasonable. Today she had glue all over the front of her dress and when asked she said, “Someone flung the glue at me.” Hmmm….suspicious.

I was finishing some things up at the end of the day and Grace comes in the door and says, “You need to come and change Eli’s nappy, he’s made a poo.” Okay, I know it’s been a long day for Donné with Eli not sleeping, let’s get done and go and help. I get inside and there is no poo nappy, and Donné tells me that she explicitly told Grace not to tell me that after Grace had told her what she was going to tell me that. Hmmmm….telling a story to get me to come inside a bit sooner.

Stories or lies? And how does one really explain the difference between the two and still encourage story telling?

While Eli slept and recovered from the outing yesterday, Grace was on form….