Grace has been giving Eli sister hugs since he was just a little baby, and now he can return the love. After bath and just before bed time we say to Eli, “Go give your sister a hug.” He toddles off to Grace’s room, runs up to Grace and gives her a big goodnight hug. It is just to cute it melts your heart.

This is Donné and I sharing a quiet and peaceful morning coffee

Eli felt that he needed to follow in his sisters footsteps and took a dive off his high chair this evening. He stood up and stepped to the side where there was nothing to stand on, connected with the table on the way down and slammed onto his back on the floor. He did a good job too and managed to tear his upper lip frenulum which bled a heck of a lot. Fortunately it seems this is a fairly common toddler injury and it heals up on its own. He had some milk and missioned on as as if nothing had happened.

One of the favourite children’s activities at Willowbridge is to sit at the fountain and throw the stones from the side into the fountain. Eli got to spend some time working out his desire to throw and drop things, while enjoying the satisfying plop of the stones in the water.

After her extended holiday Grace returned to school today, and after a relatively small amount of, “I want to go with you daddy,” she had an excellent day.

Unfortunately she didn’t end the day well, and had to make a trip to the dentist after a giant fall. We were talking in the kitchen and Grace was dancing in the passage, and then there was a mighty crash, followed by a mighty howl, and when we picked her up there was a mighty lot of blood everywhere. I don’t know exactly how she did it, but she nearly knocked her front two teeth out. Fortunately she didn’t break either of them, and she doesn’t have to have them pulled. They are currently quite loose, and not so straight any more, but according to the dentist and the x-ray its nearly time for them to fall out, so they are a bit on the loose side anyway. In their current state her gums should heal up okay and the teeth will get more solid in their place again. They’ll be a bit skew until they fall out, but at least she didn’t crack the teeth. She also managed to chop open her bottom lip in two places, so she has a big fat swollen lip too. This is all quite a challenge for working on her “f” sound for speech therapy…

We went for our first walk in Newlands Forest today. It is such a lovely place to go walking with the family, and Grace loved it. She had an obsession with picking up the sticks…all of them. I said to her, “Grace, you can’t pick up all the sticks,” and her reply was, “Yes I can.” So I say to her, “Look at the ground Grace, how many sticks are there?” She looks, pauses for a while (I think she was counting), and says, “More than I can count.” Yip, that’s right Grace, and we don’t need to take them all home with us.

After many years our dear friends Em and Jason have been blessed with a little boy, David. We’re so excited about this little man, because it has been such a long journey for them to get here. Today we got to meet little David and it is wonderful to see our friends doing well and enjoying their little boy.

Grace thinks another sibling would be a good idea, but her vote is for a sister

Eli was up on the counter and I opened the cupboard to ask him if he wanted anything from it. He looked, and pointed at the yellow maizena tin that we keep our tea in, so I opened it up for him. He plucked a tea bag from the tin, leans over and puts it into his plastic cup, tips it up and “drinks” from it. Cup of tea Eli? “Es, es.” Well, he does know what he wants.

Fork? Hands? Nah, I’ll just get the food straight to my mouth

Our Jeffrey’s Bay holiday now comes to an end as we travel home tonight, and the year finally starts. It’s a bit weird for the year to be starting after the first month, but here we go, let’s make the year awesome.

Eli and Grace having a ride outside the Wimpy in Jeffreys Bay