With summer weather on the way we can sit outside, watch the fish and read stories at bedtime

In other good news, Eli made it through two nights in a row….holding thumbs for good things.

753 days of waking up at night, and then last night – for the first time for the second time – Eli slept all the way through the night until 06h00, which is entirely awesome. Let’s hope that this is the start of a long and prosperous stretch of sleeping through.

Unfortunately Grace decided to wake up at 04h30….we’ll get there.

Eli has a happy day today, making plastic food, checking for all the things that fit into the phone plug, weeding the garden, and helping me to empty out one of the filters.

We spent the morning at the Root 44 market, which is a pretty cool market. Grace and Eli had pancakes (happy children) and we had good coffee (happy parents), spent some time playing in the great play area, went for a train ride, and Grace “won” a prize in the kids area with a magnetic duck game (fish for the duck, then choose a prize based on the number on the duck). She was super excited about the duck fishing game and I’m pretty sure that will be happening again in the future.

Grace has had this persistent dry cough since about the start of last term, and it has just never quite cleared up. We’ve now been recommended to have some allergy tests done, so she had blood drawn for the first time today. The nurses were great, and she had a local anaesthetic patch that she wore before the time, which meant that everything went very, very well. She is generally calm about this sort of thing, and has seen us have blood taken. After the needle was in she had a look to see what they were doing. Luckily blood samples are quick, not that Grace seemed to be too worried about it at all.

All done, just a few things to say to the nurse

Grace decided she wanted to go to school for the pottery session they were having, and made a unicorn. There were photos, but none of Grace’s unicorn. I’m very interested to see what the end product looks like….10 days of waiting now….tick tock.

Little potter hands (Photo courtesy of Newberry Montessori)

We don’t just need anyone to chop marrows, we need someone super…..super Grace, who was given super powers when she received her super hero cape from aunty Kim (which Kim made for Jack’s birthday party).

Just focus, concentrate and try not to cut your fingers with that knife

Thanks for helping out, Super Chopper Grace

Aunty Mel is in town, so its time for a friends get together! And being together with old friends is awesome.

The feast! Looks like we need more tables…

The cookie patrol

A couple of weeks ago our neighbours little girl, Hannah, arrives at our gate, “Can I come for a play date?” We couldn’t right then, but Grace and Hannah spent some time discussing their schedules and when it could possibly work. On Saturday Hannah comes knocking again, and spent most of the afternoon here playing with Grace. Her little sister Rebecca also joined them later, and Eli and her seem to get along well.

They came for a visit again today, and judging by how nicely they all play together we seem to have made some friends who I think we’ll be seeing often…

Trying to touch the fish

Preparing some dinner and tea together

We had our first (brief) swim in our pool today. After a month of the pool being emptied, taken out of the ground, put back in, relined, filled, tiled, going green, getting cleaned, getting a cover and going blue, we can now actually use it. And so we did, even though it was quite cold, and poor Grace shivered away for the few minutes we were in the pool.

Testing it out….brrr

A quick swim before Grace got really cold…she’ll have to get used to the temperature of an outside pool