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We got back a few days ago from a trip to London. Charlotte and I met Brian on his way home from a conference in Spain. It was a lot of fun, and also tiring. Charlotte wants to walk everywhere these days, so getting her into her stroller on busy streets turned into a wrestling match more than once. We saw a lot of the sights, though, and had some really good food.

Charlotte became obsessed with this backpack at the Tate Modern museum store.

We visited some great playgrounds in London. The Princess Diana memorial playground was huge, with a giant pirate ship, tunnels, teepees and lots of swings and slides. This one below was smaller and had goats and sheep roaming around.

Brian took these pictures from the London Eye.

We spent most of a day at the Tower of London, which is in the background here.

Inside the Tower of London–one of the Buckingham Palace guards seemed to be on loan.

Charlotte and I in front of the Tower Bridge.

Brian and Charlotte inside the big indoor courtyard of the British Museum.

My mom took this video last month…there was a dance party on Sesame Street and Charlotte joined in.

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

I told Charlotte that her outfit was called a jumper, and throughout the day she would look down at herself, say “jumper!” and then start jumping up and down.

Charlotte really likes to eat bread dipped in oil, which we refer to as “oily bread” to her. Tonight she also just stuck her whole hand in the oil and then put it in her mouth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVuMfrsy2UI

Charlotte works on her masterpiece with paint and crayons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaWP5bJNvUk

But it’s hard to really get creative when you don’t like to get your fingers dirty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mfHk_Tn_Sc

We spent most of last week (well, till we had to leave early because of the forecasted hurricane) at the Cape. Charlotte had a lot of fun playing on the beach every day. She learned a lot of new words while we were there — “bike ride,” “helmet” and “seaweed.” She has also started saying “no” a lot, but luckily also says “yeah!” and “yup!” too. Charlotte also said “buy” a lot while we were on vacation–when she saw a cupcake, or ice cream, or a toy she would point at it and to the cash register and say “buy! buy!” (Yesterday she got me to buy a package of toilet paper at the grocery store because it had a dog on it…she kept saying “woof woof! buy!” until I finally gave in.)

This is the view from the back porch where we were staying — this little pier was totally covered during high tide.

Charlotte liked eating breakfast outside.

We all ate lots of ice cream and frappes.

This is at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. The weather was beautiful like this the whole week.

Charlotte was obsessed with the tiny crabs living in holes all along the trail.

Sitting on the front porch is a major source of entertainment for Charlotte. This was a few weeks ago and we can’t remember exactly what she was looking at here. But in general she likes to look at birds, people going by, especially babies or bikers, rocks, sticks, leaves and bumblebees on the flowers. Yesterday we watched a big thunderstorm from the porch and she seemed to like that, too–today she was asking for “more thunder.”

Charlotte helped make dinner the other night, although she ate quite a lot of the pizza toppings in the process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGQSiAZuf7g

Here’s Charlotte lounging while she waits to eat pineapple.

Charlotte helped my mom weed their yard over the weekend. She was very intent on helping carry around the box to put the weeds in, and she said “Weed! Weed!” while she was pulling up weeds.