This one, That One, Another One, One More and The Last One

With my upcoming redundancy Grace and I have been talking jobs. According to Grace I could stay at home and look after her. But she plans to pay me with pennies. 'But not too many pennies or she might run out...' Her other great suggestion is that I could work at the local garden centre. 'If you worked at the Garden Centre, I could come and visit you any time I wanted...Yes I know I can see

you at home anytime. But at the garden centre I could also see all of the fish...' 

 

Grace has a crush. A very scary yucky crush.
The other morning before school, I spied her giving a little boy in her class a cuddle. She then leant in close and gave him a kiss on the cheek. A KISS ON THE CHEEK! Oh. My. Gosh. Just wow! And I have to say I was a little relieved when he wriggled free of her grasp to run away. But it seemed a little pointless since she only chased after him anyway. He managed to lose her somewhere out on the basketball courts. She gave up the chase and then came skipping back over to me. She didn't seem disappointed.
But while I was laughing with one of the other mum's and discussing just how grown up all of the kids seem to be when that same little boy came running over to her. He wrapped his little arms around her then gave her a big kiss. ON THE MOUTH... It was only a peck but I stopped laughing pretty quickly.
They said they grow fast but not this fast!

I think being a Diva may come a little too naturally to Grace.
She had her first school disco this week and we had a lovely time getting her all dressed up for it. With some persuasion, I let her wear some makeup. Nothing to crazy - just a little lip gloss, blush and ummm... mascara. Yep. Mascara! 'Mummy can I wear mascara? Why not? I know my eyelashes are beautiful. But with some mascara I can have pretty lashes like you!'. Because sometimes flattery really does get you what you want. But look at just how lovely she looks!

 

I stayed at the Disco for about ten minutes or so to make sure that Grace was all settled in. Before leaving I gave her a couple of glow sticks so she could really rock out. Unfortunately she burst one pretty much straight away. It went all over my coat and I'm pretty sure my parts of my face were glowing a pretty shade of highlighter pink! But I took that as my cue to leave. At home I had about an hour to kill. The first thing I did was scrub my coat because while 'You're glowing' is always a great compliment, I'm not sure that 'Hey man, your elbow is looking so fluorescent these days' really counts as much of a compliment. And then I spent the next forty minutes pacing the kitchen and clanking at the clock while eating a carrot. I think I was more than a little nervous for her. But in next to no time, it was time to go pick her up.
After the Disco, Grace was sitting eating some pasta with Neil and me. We were discussing how her evening had gone and then we got around to talking about boys and how you mustn't go about kissing them. Ever. Never Ever (I really can't stress this 'never' business enough). But according to Grace she has a 'front friend' and a 'back friend'. At first this statement raised some eyebrows. But after some questioning it was explained...
'Mummy, I have five friends... Yes friends. And my friends are boys. So they are my boyfriends. This one, That One, Another One, One More and The Last One' (Okay, just to explain that is obviously not their names but that amounts to what I heard her say). As she listed them off she counted them each on her hand. 'This One is my front friend and The Last One is my back friend. My front friend is the one I like the best. And The Last One is the friend that I like the least because sometimes he doesn't want to sit near me. Actually I think maybe he isn't really my friend. I don't really like him at all. So he is my back friend...' (It makes complete sense if you think about it). 'And This One is my favourite. We pretend to be firemen together. I like him the best. I like him so much that I Just want to give him a big kiss!' So I told her what she needed to hear - Kissing boys makes you turn into a boy. So that should be the end of that.