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It’s possible that Baby Dolly should be wearing the hard hat, since Charlotte likes to push her around the house at very high speeds. Baby Dolly has been taking a lot of trips to the doctor lately — Charlotte likes to pretend that Baby Dolly has a boo-boo and needs a band-aid. Then she gets medicine and a lollipop. Charlotte also likes to pretend she’s going on an airplane, which is a bench in our bedroom. Her choice of destination is usually either London or Indiana. And then there’s pretending to be a baby bird, where she asks us to make her a nest out of blankets, then feed her baby bird food (she said it was silly when I told her that birds eat worms).

We went out to western Mass. a few weekends ago to visit a maple sugar shack — they’re only open for about six weeks during this time of year. We saw them making maple syrup, which smelled amazing, and then ate breakfast at the restaurant there. Charlotte liked pretending to drive the old tractor. She also loved the pancakes and sausage, which are two of her favorite foods. And the hotel pool was a huge hit, as was watching Snow White in bed at the hotel.  

Charlotte examined this cheese grater for awhile when we took it out. Then she demanded to use it “all by self.” She wants to do everything all by self lately, and likes to announce that she is doing it all by self. The other day, someone from Comcast came to fix our TV cables out in back of the house. Charlotte later told Brian, “Guy came and fixed TV, all by self. With glue and tape.”  

Charlotte loves her new umbrella. She pretends it’s raining and says “Uh oh! Mama’s getting wet!” Then she opens the umbrella to keep us dry. It finally did rain last week, and she was so thrilled to be standing outside in the rain with her umbrella over her head.

Charlotte really likes to do dishes. It usually ends with her getting her entire outfit and/or the floor soaking wet. During this session she also dunked her head under the faucet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4ppzAewVbo

Charlotte got this hard hat at a birthday party, and insisted on wearing it to play with playdough…or rather while Mama played with playdough and Charlotte requested the shapes she wanted cut out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNuHbnmGFC0

Charlotte has learned lots of useful things at her little school: how to put her jacket on by herself, how to sing the ABCs and how to do a somersault (we think…otherwise we have no idea where she figured that out). We think she learned from the other kids to take a bite of food and then open her mouth wide, too.

We got another big snowstorm this week. Charlotte finally agreed to wear her waterproof snow mittens after one of her little friends had the same ones. The last hurdle remains her snowboots, which she still refuses to wear.

We’ve discovered that taking her out for some playing and shoveling almost guarantees that she’ll take a nap in her crib afterwards.

Charlotte got a kazoo and a drum for Christmas, so it’s been a very musical week. She has been singing “Happy Birthday” and “Jingle Bell Rock” a lot, and likes to put the drum around her neck and march around the house pretending she’s in a parade. Charlotte is still working on the finer points of kazooing. We’ve heard her call it both a trombone and a trumpet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duR8pITcxJ8