Just a couple of months ago we were worried about Eli’s speech, but this year he has had a sensitive period for speech and has developed so amazingly. Two months ago he was hardly putting together two words in a sentence, and now he has plenty of two word sentences and lots of 3 word ones too. The sounds he is able to make has grown so quickly, and there are just a few sounds that he is substituting, most notably he uses a “d” for a “c”.

A little chat about the electricity and saying “hadedah”

Eli has never been interested in eating grapes. If you offer them to him, he doesn’t even try.

Donné offered Eli some grapes today, and as expected he was not interested, so Grace took it upon herself to try and get Eli to eat a grape. She says to him, “Eli, just try a one grape.” Nope, not interested. Then she says, “Eli, you’ll like it, there is juice in grapes.”

Ah, that did the trick and he ate some grapes.

Grace says to Donné, “See mommy, I told him there was juice in them and he ate one!” but Donné is thinking that he just decided to try one, and it didn’t have anything to do with Grace’s persuasion methods.

Later Donné offered Eli a grape again, and he says, “Juice inside.” Well mommy, I think Grace was right and it was her juicy persuasion that managed to sway him.

Grace has played the “Who wants some ice cream?” game for quite a while now. She sits on the jungle gym and the bar becomes her window for selling her imaginary ice cream specials. Now she has a helper for her shop….

Eli decided to study the load shedding schedule to see when next it would be time for, “‘tricity off,” (as he says).

We had an awesome braai at school, and got to meet and get to know more of the families – we now have names for some of the faces we see everyday. It was a great time and Eli and Grace missioned around playing. It’s about the latest that they’ve stayed up, but they both did well.

Grace, Kate and Eli gathering the hula hoops

Eli knows how to ask for something, and he knows how to ask really nicely. He doesn’t whine or moan, he just looks at you with big blue eyes and says please so nicely that it melts your heart. He just says, “Pees mommy,” and well, it’s hard to say no. Poor Donné keeps saying, “You’re killing me Eli, you’re killing me,” like when they were going through the toy store and Eli would pick up every truck and gently implore, “Pees mommy, pees mommy.” Or at night when he is going to sleep and I tell him that he has had enough water and can’t have any more…then soon after comes a quiet, “Pees water, pees water” from the bed….well, it’s hard to say no.

The cake decorating course continues, with Donné learning how to make all sorts of cupcake toppers from sugar paste – like flowers, owls and teapots.

This weeks outputs

Grace requested an owl

Grace thought this cupcake was very funny – a cupcake on a cupcake.

Eli had his first swimming lesson without me in the water today, and it went pretty well. We had some tears and him coming to me a few times, but he did do all of the exercises. He would do one, come to me for a little cry, and then go and sit back with the others. He did well.

Grace keeps asking if he went on the slide, and today he did so I took a little video for her.

Grace was saying, “Do you know? Eli is not just my brother, he is also my friend. When my friends go home I can still play with him.” And that is why having a brother is awesome.

Grace was talking to Gogo & Gramps…Eli was trying to pull the sequins off her top