Bonfire Night 2012

After a fantastic Bonfire Night last year in Blackheath, Jason and I had our expectations pretty high for this year.  We were initially planning on heading back to Blackheath, but then a friend told me that Crystal Palace Park was hosting a fun fair and fireworks.  We were especially wooed by reading about the special "fewer bangs" kid's show at 7pm.  (Unlike Blackheath, they charge £5 for adults but all the proceeds go to charity.)  We decided to give it a try and were so happy we did.  It was a great time and nice to be able to walk home afterwards.  

Here is a little video I took of the main event:

Jason and I agreed that despite being a kid's show, it was one of the best displays we'd ever seen!

Most of the pictures didn't turn out because it was so dark, but at least you can get an idea of what we were up to:

Yes, I know her coat is a bit small.  She now has a new bright green one!

Mama was nice and shared her hot chocolate with marshmallows.

Jason tried to win Charlie a HUGE stuffed animal.
He didn't win, but at least all the proceeds went to charity.  :)

We passed on the fun fair, but you can see some lights and rides in this picture.

Waiting for the fireworks to start.

She gripped Jason's head pretty tightly at times, but overall seemed to really love it!

And for reference, here is a picture of Jason and Charlotte at last year's event.  She's sure grown a lot of hair since then!

Italy Part III: Charlie dances and then sits on a suitcase

Untitled from Bethie on Vimeo.

Slide

This post is about one of the two things Bethie says that Charlie and I do while she's away (the other one is eat oatmeal, which requires no blog post).

We have several nice parks in our new neighbourhood:  the large Crystal Palace Park, a smaller park that has a lake, and Westow Park, which is pleasant if small.  It's also just behind the Sainsbury's, so it's a convenient place to stop as part of a trip to the grocery.

The most important part of Westow Park is the disproportionately large playground (and there seem to be plans to make it bigger and better).  As we approach, Charlie starts to happily fuss around in her pushchair, chatting and smiling with excitement.  When she gets out of the pram, she stands still, taking in the scene.  When she decides to start playing, she usually walks toward the toys and other kids with a loud, "AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" in a consistent tone.  She'll do it for ten seconds or so.  Just letting everyone know she's there.

Last Saturday, she was bold enough to climb up the steps of one of the toys.  She would either crawl through the tunnel or slide down the slide, with my help.  Yesterday, though, she figured the whole thing out for herself:

Birds

Our wonderful neighbour, Jayne, took Charlotte and me to explore a nearby park yesterday afternoon.  She had mentioned it before, but I just hadn't managed to find it yet.  To my surprise it was not only super close, but super awesome!  It has a huge play area, a lake and a zip-line!  I want to go back with the nice camera so I didn't take many pictures, but I did get a video of Charlie watching the birds at the lake.  She kept saying, "bird" over and over again.  It was pretty cute.  

The Cutest Way to Eat a Pear - By Charlotte Hungerford

1.  Have your mum peel it for you.

2.  Be super cute.

3.  Eat the pear.

I've included a video just in case the pictures were unclear.

All Bundled Up

It has been a bit chilly here the last couple of days, so we've all been bundling up a bit more than usual.  Luckily, Charlotte doesn't seem to mind!

PS:  I just watched this video and realised how incredibly annoying my voice sounds in it.  Woah.  Sorry about that! 

The Marmite Project

Behold, an unwitting American eats Marmite for the first time (and then tries to feed it to her husband):

See our other Marmite videos here!

Music Saves

Charlie was in the midst of a meltdown and I started recording a video of our little drama queen to send to Jason.  All of a sudden, completely mid-meltdown, she decides that she knows just what would make her happy again.  After this video (taken last week) she was her happy, bubbly self again!

Music Saves!

The Marmite Project

Behold, an unwitting American eats Marmite for the first time (this is a really, really good one!):

Eating Skillz

Jason sent me this video of Charlie feeding herself yoghurt and I thought it was too cute not to share!

Can you believe that she had her first solid foods only six months ago?!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

We won't be able to celebrate around here until Saturday (we'll be hosting eleven adults and three little ones in our tiny apartment!) but Charlotte wanted to share this video in the meantime.  She is a very happy and thankful baby and wanted you all to know it.

Snoopy Spoon

As I mentioned in this post, Charlie loves her Snoopy spoon.  It is a spoon that Jason's mom gave us (along with other items from Jason's childhood) before Charlie was born.  We didn't think much of it until recently when she started smiling and making happy noises when she saw the image of Snoopy and Woodstock on the top of the spoon.  In fact, she loves it so much that I make an effort to make sure it is clean before every meal so she can smile at it.  If I happen to use a different spoon, she always tries to find Snoopy at the top and seems disappointed when she doesn't find him there.

The funny thing is that this is the only image of Snoopy she has ever seen in her life.  But for whatever reason, she just loves his happy little grin!  As proof, here she is giving Snoopy kisses at the end of breakfast this morning.  (Warning, this might be the cutest thing you've ever seen in your life.)

Cute things Charlie does

-If she sees herself in the mirror, she blows herself kisses.
-Similarly, if she is holding her small, play mirror, she will put her mouth on it and give it a kiss!
-Still on the kissing theme, she will often lean in and give us a kiss.  (And by kiss, I mean that she likes to put her open mouth near our mouths while make a kissing noise.)
-Charlie pulls herself up on anything and everything:  chairs, the side of the bathtub, our legs, anything!
-She loves walking around the house while we hold her hands.  She also loves pushing her little pushcart.  See this post.
-She is starting to mimic sounds.  While reading "Moo, Baa, Lalala" yesterday she repeated "bow wow wow" after I read it.  Jason and I looked at each other with jaws on the floor!  It was a dead-on impression!
-She LOVES reading books and will sometimes bring us books if she wants us to read them.  On her own, she'll flip through them page by page and chat and laugh.
-She is a very chatty baby and chats and coos while she plays.
-She will wave and say "hiya" with a little prompting.  She also loves waving goodbye.
-One of her baby spoons is from when Jason was a baby.  It has Snoopy and Woodstock at the top.  If I show her the top of the spoon, she will smile and laugh.  (We're considering getting her a Snoopy toy if we can find one!)
-When she wakes up from a nap she coos and makes sweet noises until we come and get her.  We get HUGE smiles when we pull her out of the crib!
-She loves when I pat her mouth while she vocalises.  She tries to do it herself without quite as much success . . .

Communication Skillz

She speaks! (Well, kind of.)



We've been working on some simple sign language signs for quite a while now and she seems to (finally!) be catching on!

(PS: I'm not sure why the sound is a bit off. I'll see what I can do about that.)

Moving on . . .

On this anniversary of 9/11, it is good to see that, despite the utter devestation that was this day ten years ago, life moves on.  Today Charlie crawled for the first time! 

Charlie reads a book

Walking Skillz

Charlotte can walk!  Well, okay, she isn't actually walking, but she is closer than ever before.  My mom started walking with her while she was in town, and Charlie is totally hooked.  It is her new favourite pastime and her newest skill.

Good Morning 4am!

Charlotte was up at 1:30 this morning for a feed and then up for the day around 4:00.  I fed her, rocked her, sang to her and even let her cry it out for a half-hour (she wasn't full on crying, just fussing) but then I started to stress about our neighbours.  I finally brought her downstairs to the little rocking chair her friend Emily lent her and gave her a dummy.  When that didn't work, I turned the TV on, hoping the quiet noise and bright colours would calm her down enough to sleep.  Nope.  Here's what she's up to as I type:





It is now getting close to 7am and she is showing no signs of sleeping (other than that little yawn in the video).  Luckily I don't have much going on today.  My friend Mary-Maye is coming over for tea this morning, but other than that we're free to nap should the opportunity arise.  I don't know how parents who both work, or single parents, or parents of multiple children function on such little sleep!  Heck, I don't know how Charlotte functions on such little sleep!

Sitting Skillz!

Charlotte has been close to sitting up on her own for weeks now. She was sitting with Jason for long periods just the other day (while I was vomiting. Ugh.) and then she made it official yesterday.  Charlotte is really enjoying her new skill and Jason and I just can't get over what a big girl she is now! She'll be crawling before we know it!



In other news, all three of us have recovered from the stomach bug that overtook the family over the weekend. We had to skip out on our ex-pat 4th of July picnic on the common which we were super bummed about, but we're just grateful to be feeling better!

Happy Fathers Day

Dadada:

Pa:

Grandpa Marshall:

In honor or Father's Day, Charlotte has said her first word, "Dadada".  While it happens to be the name the grandkids call my dad, I'm certain that she also had her Pa and Grandpa Marshall in mind.  Had she the skill, she would have invoked their names as well.  ;)