Today was the first day of school for the new term, and the day seems to have gone well. Eli had some tears this morning, but that settled quickly and he got on with things. Eli is now in a bridging class, which is all the children who would have moved up to the preschool except that there is just no space left in the other two classes. It is set up as a preschool class, so the equipment is different to the toddler class. The new class also means that Eli gets to have break at the same time as Grace, so they spent time playing together today.

We were asking Eli about his day, “What did you do in class today?” He says (while lying on the floor), “Boring things,” so I guess that tells us something about what he currently thinks of the new class…

This morning Grace achieved a long time goal. She has been working on this for a while, but has never quite succeeded in all her attempts so far.

I was getting ready this morning, shaving, washing my face, etc. with Eli sitting with me asking questions about shaving. I finished up and he was still talking to me as I was walking out of the bathroom. Grace had closed her door so the passage was dark. As I came out of the bathroom, something jumped out of the closet and cried, “Boo!” which gave me quite an unexpected shock.

Grace had finally done it! She managed to give me a fright by being sneaky and jumping out at me.

For a long time she has been trying to give me a fright, but stomping around and saying, “Boo!” just doesn’t work. This morning she figured it out, and I’m quite proud of her for it.

Grace was having a difficult day today, and certainly frustrating both Donné and I in different ways. At bath time Eli always gets slicked up with an ointment which helps to control his eczema and he was saying that he didn’t want it. I’m getting ready to put it on him and Grace says to him, “Just get in,” trying to give him a way to sneak out of it.

With everything that had gone before I was quite agitated by this behaviour and started, “Grace, you are…” and I took a moment to choose my words. Eli didn’t miss a beat though, “…naughty!” he says. That certainly broke the tension and had us all giggling. I was swaying more towards, “…walking a thin line,” but hey, that’s the way it goes sometimes.

Grace borrowed a set of roller skates from Rachel and has been enjoying learning how to move around on them (with lots of wobbles). Today she decided that she needed to build an obstacle course for herself, with sticks from the firewood and sports cones.

In other news we also watched The Sound of Music together for the first time today.

We had a lot of fun celebrating Donné’s birthday, and at the end of the day our staying-over friends put together a drum circle

Just like Gramps he woke up for the credits

Hard things are well…hard.

There are all sorts of things that are hard to do, and they are different for everyone – picking up the phone to tell someone you are sorry, or letting a supplier know you won’t be able to pay them back because your business has gone under, facing the fear of falling while learning to roller skate, being open and honest (and compassionate) with someone you have a difficult relationship with.

There is always that wall to get through, when your survival instinct says, “Run!” even though you know it has to get done. That wall is where we face some of our toughest challenges, where we decide whether we will avoid the pain of pushing through, even though the pain is usually imagined. Anxiety about things that may or may not happen holds us back.

That is the point of choice where we decide whether we will do, because doing hard things starts with doing.

Donné took Grace and Eli to a Kim’s house for a big get together and when it came time to leave, she got Eli into the car and Grace suddenly realised that she hadn’t said goodbye to everyone. Donné sent her off to quickly say goodbye. Time passes. Donné can’t leave Eli in the car outside alone, so Kim goes to find Grace.

When she gets to the car, it is time to answer for how long she has taken, so Grace says, “I couldn’t find Rachel, and it’s her house, so I didn’t want to be rude and not say goodbye to her.” Well, you can’t really argue with that.

Trampoline fun with friends (thanks Lisa for the photo)

My mom had never tasted a macaron, so we had some fun making some together while we were on hoiday.

The spoils of cake making have to be divided