Everyday I watch Grace learning new ways to shape the world she lives in to get what she wants.  She has discovered that if she wants me to get off the swing (she always says "no no no" if I sit on it, which is usually followed by a "It's good to share," conversation), she then indicates to me that she wants to hang on the monkey bars, but as soon as I get up from the swing and go over to her she says "no," goes down the slide and climbs on the swing.  Grace has done this 3 times in the last 2 days so I know she has it all figured out – "I want mommy off my swing, so pretend to want to climb the monkey bars, because mom said no climbing unless there is an adult present, mom gets up, I say no no I don't want to climb the monkey bars, quickly go down the slide and I get my swing back"  

Grace fancies herself as quite the music connoisseur. She is very particular about what she likes and dislikes – if we put on some music and it is a song she does not like we are sure to hear, "No, no, no." Switch to a song she does like and there is usually a nod of the head with a "Mm." We were on our way to the library today and a car drove past us with his music playing quite loudly. Turns out his music did not make the cut, with Grace saying, "No, no, no." in the back seat.

Cape Town is having a mini summer in the middle of winter and Grace is loving it. It means hours of fun on the jungle gym. I put the umbrella up over the jungle gym and she loved playing in her little house.

Grace saw Spice poop in the garden yesterday and it made an impression because she made her first two word sentence when she saw Spice, “more poo” – she is definitely a Drennan

Grace has started to develop more and more tactics to avoid going to sleep, both during the day and the evening. Mostly she asks to go to the toilet, have something to drink, or have something to eat, so we try to make sure that we have eliminated those options before we even start trying to put her to sleep. She was taking some time to go to sleep after Donné put her down for her afternoon nap today, and I went to check on her. Our discussion went something like this:

Today we celebrated Grace's 2nd birthday…again, this time with our Cape Town friends.It was an absolutely stunning day and perfect for being outside in the garden and playing on the jungle gym. Grace was spoiled yet again (thank you friends).

I got to spend today with special friends and have two and a half hours of pampering – what bliss! Thank you to my special friends and to the men in our lives for looking after the children.

Grace decided that if Coco the cat could hide in the box, so could she. 

Firstly you cross your legs and make sure that you are neatly squished inside the box

Then you close yourself in

And then you go boo

Although the spots on Grace's tummy, back, arms and legs seem to be fading her face looked rather spotty today

Grace has possibly been exposed to the chicken pox virus twice in the last couple of weeks, so when she broke out in a rash yesterday we assumed that it was going to be chicken pox.

On closer inspection this morning it was obvious that it wasn’t the pox so off we went to the doctor. He wasn’t 100% certain but thought it might be measles, but Grace had “measles” at 9 months so how is that possible?

Who knows, but I thought at 9 months (and now again at 2) that she doesn’t have any typical signs of measles except for a rash, fever and swollen glands and well that could be most viral infections. So for now I’m calling it a rash and doing the responsible mommy thing of keeping her away from other children just incase she has measles or something else contagious 🙂

Donné bought Grace a jungle gym for her birthday and it arrived today, to Grace's absolute delight. Waiting while they put it up seemed to be torture for Grace, but I think the cruel part was when the guy said that she can't play on it for two days until it dries….how to teach a two year old delayed gratification. We did let her test out the slide, swing and monkey bars though.