Grace had a “surprise” that they made at school for Mother’s Day – a foot scrub which Grace massaged onto Donné’s feet. Unfortunately her endurance didn’t last long enough for a photo.

We celebrated Mother’s Day last week Sunday with a real surprise crumpet breakfast, a home made “we love mom” card and sushi for lunch. In honour of everything that Donné does for us we choose to make it her special day by having Mother’s Day on a different day, a day which is hers alone, and a day which is a surprise.

Our home made Mother’s Day card

And on the inside

Eli bumped his head, and when he hurts himself relatively badly, he makes a kind of “Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh!” cry. Graces says, “Why is Eli saying itch, itch, itch?”

Wondering what to do with your outdated yellow pages?

Donné stepped out of the room for a moment and Eli decided going over Mr Spicey was a good idea. Of course Mr Spicey didn’t seem to mind.

Heh, heh, heh, look at me mom

Learning to crawl is hard work.

Marius – one of the guys that I work with – sometimes brings his border collie, Ukumi, around when he comes to work here, and Grace absolutely loves her. She throws sticks for her, throws a ball for her and just plays with her.

Today she made Ukumi a “pie”….she fetched a mixing bowl, collected some chillies, plumbago flowers and pelargonium flowers, filled the bowl with water and covered it with some plastic so that it could “rise”.

She says to Ukumi, “Now we’re going to play. First you run and I’ll catch you, then I run and you catch me.” And off she goes running.

And at the end of the day, “Ahhh, she’s my new friend….I love her.”

Donné asked Grace today, “Did you enjoy swimming Grace?” and Grace replies, “Yes…why do you keep asking me hundreds and thousands of times?” Not the first time the question was asked, but maybe a little bit melodramatic.

Yum! Broccoli!

There are little things which make you realise your child is growing up and becoming a little bit more independent. In our case, Grace is getting much better at brushing her teeth on her own (still needs a second sweep of the teeth just to be sure), washing herself entirely independently (and has been able to for a while), blowing her nose properly (yes, really properly….”big daddy blows”….something which has really felt like it has taken forever to get right), and chewing her food (which she has never really done much of). Little things, but all little reminders of how big she is getting.

Grace has developed a sudden particular love of Coco, and is quite happy if she can pick her up and walk around with her. Today she says, “I hid Coco,”…..which means, “I locked Coco in the cupboard.” No Grace, that’s not a nice way to play.

Whee!

We’ve been trying to figure out what to do for Grace’s party and were having a conversation this morning. Grace happened to walk into the room as I said, “We don’t have to have a party for Grace.” Her response? “NO! Else I won’t be able to turn four!”

Little blue eyes. The bruise under his eye is from face planting into one of his toys

Time for some brother & sister arts and crafts

I got it!

Cuddles

In other news Eli ate steak for the first time today (although I guess he eats steak regularly depending on how you classify biltong), and his other first was oats with mashed banana for breakfast.