We'll miss you Lisa!

We have been lucky to have the world's best babysitter but unfortunately she is moving away. Zoe and Lisa love to play with playdough together and love to play peek a boo. Lisa has been spending several mornings a week with Zoe these past few weeks and Zoe is really going to miss her. We all will!

we played at the train table at Barnes and Nobel

a plastic strawberry got stuck under the stove...

...but we found it.

Toby gave Zoe a kiss

Toby came to visit!

We went out for mussels yum!

Zoe loves playdough

18 months old!

Zoe is 18-months-old today. I haven't been giving monthly updates but I think this "birthday" calls for one. At 18 months Zoe's favorite activities are drawing and play doh. She also loves playing with her Fisher Price Little People house which she says with a Texas accent for some reason "howwwwwse." Hard to write it but perhaps you can imagine it? We really get a kick out of this. She has recently learned a lot of her friends' names and for the first time she seems excited to see some of her little playmates that we've been hanging out with for the past year. She can sing several songs. Her favorites are "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," the ABCs and the clean up song. It is adorable when she breaks into song. She is very serious about her singing. She can also count to 10 and recognize some of the shapes. She's been talking a lot! Mostly still just a ton of words but occasionally a little sentence comes out of her mouth. Here is a picture of her from today taken in her Grammy and Grandpa's yard.

Armory Art Show

Zoe loved the art show we went to yesterday. There were a lot of pictures of her favorite things such as cats and eyes.

we've also been having fun since we got back to NY

In the building playroom...































And yesterday was gorgeous and we went outside...

Zoe does London

Zoe's second trip to London was a success. We all had a fantastic time. The main purpose of our trip was to go to Matt and Anna's wedding but we also got in a lot of time with Zoe's Great-Grandma Nita, saw lots of other family and had a lot of fun around London.

Our first day there we visited Grandma Nita in the morning (which was sort of afternoon by the time we got moving with the time change) and went to lunch with her. She was very excited when Zoe called her by name.

After lunch we went back into the city and walked around a bit before meeting up with a group of cousins and other family for dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant Simply Indian. There is a lot to be said for traveling East with a little one -she didn't get cranky at our 8pm dinners because to her it felt early and I got to sleep late for the first time time in nearly 18 months!

The next day we visited Grandma Nita again in the morning and this time Pam and Chas (aka Grammy and Grandpa) were there too. Needless to say Zoe loved all of the attention.

We headed back into the city to meet up with our friends Sam and Will and their new(ish) baby Zac who is 6-months-old. During dinner Zoe loved playing with Zac's feet while he kicked. She loved his little tiger booties. It was the first time she really showed much interest in a baby.



After dinner we did a little shopping. What a treat to be able to buy things in London and not feel like we were paying double for the first time in years. Zoe got a whole summer wordrobe but she didn't seem to care much, in fact she let us know when shopping time was over. She did enjoy trying on hats in one store.



The next day we had gorgeous weather. It was in the 60s and sunny. We started the day at Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards because this is one of my greatest memories of trips to London as a kid (granted I was a little older than 17 months so we'll have to take her back in a few years).


After the guards we went to St. James Park which was absolutely gorgeous. We found a great playground which Zoe thoroughly enjoyed.



At Trafalgar square we took a replica of the picture we took last year of Zoe held up in the air with her belly exposed. We saw a great Picasso exibit at the National Gallery which Zoe napped through. One of the great things about traveling to a city with a baby that still needs sleep during the day is that we never had to worry about how to get this sleep in -we just went to a museum or other activity that she wouldn't mind missing while she slept in the stroller. When we took Zoe to Costa Rica we spent a lot of time in the hotel rooms while she napped and her naps often dictated our day's activities.




We had a hankering for fish and chips so we took out the handy google phone (thank you Aaron!) and found the oldest fish and chip place in London which also happens to be the best fish and chips we'd ever had. I think this was the first and only meal Zoe actually ate on the entire trip.



The next day we headed out to Waddesdon where the wedding was. Even though it's only 1.5 hours from London with stops and pick-ups it somehow took us from a very early morning until late afternoon to get there and we somehow managed to get the three of us checked into the hotel and ready for the wedding in about 30 minutes!

The wedding was beautiful. It was in the dairy at the Waddesdon manor which is an amazing house built in the late 19th century for the Rothchilds. While we were there Jeff decided he wanted to live in a manor or at least in a dairy.







Zoe was very interested in her 3-month-old cousin Tammy and also played with her cousin Samuel for a while.





She loved the attention and loved playing with little glass diamond stones that were placed on each table. She kept asking for "diamond diamond." It was very cute.



The next day we went to the manor itself and walked around the grounds. They were having a special Porsche show so we took a picture of Zoe in her wheels in front of all of the cars.



On the flight home Zoe enjoyed some cartoons on the television screen and some Hula Hoops which were her dad's favorite snack as a kid.