I went into Grace's room last night while she was sleeping to close a window and check on her. She stirred a bit, but she often does so I wasn't worried about it. As I was leaving the room she says, "Need a hug." So I went to her, gave her a quick cuddle and then was off. It really melted my heart.

Having coffee at In Food in Jeffrey's Bay

Grace was naughty today. Very naughty. In fact a long list could be written. But let's not do that, instead, an interesting factoid that we realised today.

Grace has become quite the back seat driver, delivering plenty of commentary as we go along. Most of it relates to red lights and stopping and goes something like this, "No stopping! Go, go, go," after which I explain to her (again) that we can't go while the traffic light is red. Then all is quite until the traffic light goes green when it is either, "Go, go, go!" or "Go Daddy go."

Grace enjoyed Gogo singing, “There’s a hole in my bucket,” to her while she bathed. She thought it was a very funny song (which she expressed over and over again). Just before she went to bed she said to me, “Gogo sing a bery, bery, bery, bery, bery, bery, bery, bery, bery silly song.” I’m not sure exactly how many times it was that she said, “bery,” but it was lots.

Tonight we went off to the start of Donné's dad's 60th celebrations and left Gogo and Gramps to go through Grace's bedtime routine. Earlier today we had explained to Grace what would be happening and she seemed fine with it. So when the time came to go we said, "Okay Grace, mom and dad are going now." She turned to me waving and said, "Bye dad!" then turned to Donné and said, "Bye mom!" gave us each a hug and a kiss and that was that. Everything went smoothly and she was in bed and sleeping earlier than she usually is.

Grace had a happy day today. It all started with a morning with Gogo – some happy time pottering together and watching some TV. From there it was fun with aunty Keren, fun with granny and grandpa, which was then followed by a most exciting thing.

First let’s back up a bit. Today, for some reason, every time we have said, “Let’s go,” Grace has gotten super excited and started hopping around and squeeling with delight. There has been joy in going (and just about any activity).

So when we decided to go to Jeffrey’s Bay she was more than a little bit excited. Jeffrey’s Bay is a happy place for Grace, her “Other home,” as she describes it. She was just suber-uber excited to be coming. For the rest of the day we had regular, “Go Jeffrey’s Bay!” which continued on the way here, culminating in a new song about how much fun Jeffrey’s Bay is which had Grace clapping and bouncing in her seat.

When we arrived she immediately went to work settling herself in. Get the windmill from the room and put it in its place in the flower bed. Get some bubbles and blow bubbles. Run up and down the passage. Call dad saying, “Come dad! Run there, jump off there, round there, through the trees, round there!” referring to the path we had mapped out around the garden the last time we were here. The huge smile on her face might have given away that she, “Ub it here, ub it here,” (loves it here). We all love it here.