Adventures Abroad: London Calling (Again)!

Sunday, July 3, 2016

London Calling (Again)!

We started our summer with a few weeks in London. We had two 8-hour flights with a connection in Doha, which would have been very intimidating with a 2-year-old had we not had our babysitter, Dora the Explorer, to take great care of Madeline. Being in London again is refreshingly familiar. Mostly I'm referring to the weather.

Happy Summer! Some things never change.

London is a great place to have young kids. With all the parks, children's centers, summer fairs, libraries and museums you can keep yourself very busy (shout out to Hong Kong!). We took full advantage of all of these things:

Before we left for the summer Madeline had learned to ride her scooter. One of our London friends Laurie tracked down an extra scooter for us, and I had visions of Mads riding into the sunset on the smooth, long, paved paths in the park. That never happened, not only because it was too cloudy to see a sunset but also because we spent more time putting on her helmet than her actually riding the scooter.

She rode her scooter in 1-minute intervals.

We have several theme songs for the summer. The first is "Five Little Monkeys," which Mads sings ad nauseam whenever she's riding in the stroller or on Daddy's shoulders. She has changed her bedtime song from "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" to Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier." Not sure exactly how that happened, but if that's what helps our little rasta sleep then so be it. And last, Madeline has finally succumbed to "Let it Go." She was baptised into the Disney cult by Laurie's daughter's full princess gear and Disney karaoke machine.

Mads is now obsessed. One morning she woke up and said, "Awake! Frozen. 'Let it Go.'" I put it on for her, and she grabbed her lotion bottle and used it as a microphone.

It was nice to be reunited with several other friends in town. We saw a lot of Mario and Abby, as well as Belle, Richard, and their newest addition, Nora.