Grace’s swimming instructor asked her, “Grace, where are you kickies?” when her legs weren’t working very well in class today. So she says, “I left them at home.” Mom (being the smart mom that she is) pipes up, “Don’t worry Grace, I remembered to pack them in the bag. Here are your kickies!” Grace “grabs” her kickies, and lo and behold….she kicks like a champ for the rest of the lesson.

Eli’s lesson went like this: swim, pizza, passout

Making some music together….photos are always deceptive, as they don’t show the pushing, grabbing, and moaning that so easily goes with shared tasks. And at the same time, photos hardly ever capture the joy of some shared excitement.

Eli getting stuck into some homemade pizza

Eli has been loving his food, well, maybe he has been loving our food – his favourite food is whatever we are about to eat. It does make it really easy that he wants to eat our food and actually enjoys it. Tonight he ate at least two pieces of homemade pizza. It is good to see him enjoying his food, even if he only has two little teeth to chew it with (which he uses remarkably well).

Our view of the rainbow on Table Mountain while we drank coffee this morning

Having some fun in the toy store

Grace is saying goodnight to Eli, and here is how it goes, “Good night, sleep tight…..sweet dreams with Disney Junior.” Hmmm, maybe we need to reevaluate the TV situation.

Something else she picked up from TV is the way that Hallie in Doc McStuffins talks. Now she is calling Eli, “Little sugar.”

And her other favourite for Eli is to call him, “Eli D”.

Eli made some new popcorn teeth for himself…

And just so that you can see the popcorn teeth

Your call will be disconnected in 5…4…3…

Catching some cuddles with Elephant

Grace was full of wit and charm this morning. It started off when we were building a puzzle together while drinking coffee this morning. I’m building away (to push towards getting it done before leaving for school) while she is talking, asking questions and just generally distracted. She looks at what I’ve built and says, “You’re not very good at building puzzles, are you daddy?” Nice, Grace, nice….and how many pieces have you put together so far?

Donné and Eli where with us in the car on the way to school and Donné had her glasses on. Grace says, “You have your glasses on…..if you take them off, then you are cool.” Thanks for the fashion advice.

I’m not sure exactly what Eli was doing, but he got the cherry on the cake of funnies this morning. She says to him, “You are giving me grey hairs – stop doing that! I’m going to cut you.” You can tell she grew up in Cape Town. Curious, Donné asked her what she said, and she says, “I’m going to cut Eli’s hair.” Ahh, okay.

Grace has fake-a-litis and Eli thinks is it super funny. Well, Eli thinks most things his sister does are super funny.

Grace got to experience her first hail storm today, and in her words, “It’s raining ice blocks!” She was excited to go outside and collect some of the ice from the garden. We had a reasonable amount of hail here, but there are some really amazing pictures of the hail in the city – it looks like we had some snow.

Yesterday we were getting ready in the morning and said to Grace that we need to get a move on. Grace says, “I need to brush my teeth, and do my hair, and then have coffee. Then I’m ready to go.” Thank goodness she had already chosen her clothes.

There are two brothers at school, Matthew and Luke, who have always been besotted with Eli. When Donné collected Grace on Friday she heard them saying something about Eli. Luke came up to Donné and showed her a picture which said, “Eli the puppy hiding behind the grass.” Donné asks him, “Is your puppy’s name Eli?” “Yes,” says Luke. “Did you name him after Eli?” “Yes.” So that is how the puppy was named Eli.

We also saw the ENT yesterday to follow up on Eli’s ears, and the one ear was clear, with the other one busy draining, so no need for grommets! Thank you Lord!