This Town's Gone Paddington Bear Mad!

The Paddington Bear movie is coming out (or maybe is already out here?  I'm not great at paying attention to that kind of thing) and London has put 50 bear sculptures around the city to celebrate.  Each one was designed by a famous Londoner/British actor person.

I love stuff like this, that gives us an extra reason to get out and explore places we might not normally get to.  We've spotted about ten so far.  That was my personal goal.  We haven't got pictures with all of them, as some we only saw from the bus windows or didn't want to wait in line for a shot.  But some we caught on a non-crowded day.  One (the green one below) is right in our neck of the woods!  He's covered with primrose flowers and perched on Primrose Hill.  He is super soft with a sort of velveteen cover.  The kids couldn't stop feeling his coat!

After we'd seen one or two and I pulled up a map of all of the bears to see if we could get to more, Davy exclaimed, "Has this town gone Paddington Bear mad or something?!"

Yes, the answer is yes, it has!

Maybe we'll get out to see some more before they are taken down. We're going to be in and out of town a bit the next while and the weather has gotten a bit chilly and even more predictably unpredictable. It gets dark around 3:30 or 4:00, so our afternoons seem limited to close-to-home activities. But anyway, if we do happen to see any more and remember to take a picture I'll add them up here for the sake of our memory!

Davy's Movie

I'd forgotten what a little talker Davy was.  Chatterbox, even.  His movie is the longest not only because he's the first and that's what first kids often get (more on camera time) but because he was always telling some story or explaining something.  His sweet little voice brought me way back.

Eddy's Video

Catching up a bit more before the rest of the year gets busy with living travel experiences and documenting travel adventures.  Here's Edward's catching up video!  It's been fun to go back in time and see what glimmers of personality were there all along.  Eddy's grown so much in his four years.  We're proud of this kid.


That said (the being proud part) he also has been the most incident prone kid.  On Sunday afternoon we had a little issue with a glass door in our flat being slammed too hard by Eddy and shattering the glass.  It was an ordeal to clean up and will cost a penny (or a pence, rather) to pay for repair.  After I was able to laugh about the incident--I was sobbing during, let me tell you--and relating the whole to Collin on FaceTime (he was traveling for work) I realized that so far Eddy's been the instigator of a few expensive household repairs.  First the cell phone being flushed down the toilet and subsequently jammed in just the wrong place and having to replace the whole toilet.  Then the sink bowl getting shattered by a toothpaste holder being dropped out of the medicine cabinet when three-year-old Eddy went to get his brush.  Now the glass door.  All by Eddy.  None really his fault.  He was two with the toilet, so that doesn't totally count.  The toothbrush holder was my bad for having a heavy cup up high.  There shouldn't be glass doors in a rental flat in the first place.  Still, he was there for all of them . . .  Gets me nervous about what's ahead!

Bring Along a Bear Day, Zoo Edition

Yes.  Yes, this is perfection in a hat for my Eddy-bear.  I pulled it out from under a pile of other, boring winter hats at the local children's charity shop (gently used and high quality stuff in this part of town, whoop-whoop!) and remembered again why I am slightly addicted to the treasure hunt that is thrift shopping.  At 3 GBP it was a no-brainer.  It came home--on Eddy's head!--straight away.

We went to the zoo earlier this week.  Eddy kept asking me on the walk there if the animals would think he was one too.  Because he wanted them to!  He wanted to wear a mask, too, to further his disguise but I smoothly talked him outta that idea.  He's dangerous enough to himself on a scooter without adding limited vision.

I could tell he loved his hat when he didn't even fuss when I wanted a mini-photo shoot.  He was proud to show it off.  He especially loves the pom pom action when he violently shakes his head.  He does that while riding the scooter and I have to hold my breath as all sorts of worst-case accidents run round my head.

I haven't parted with my old Nikon yet, but it's certainly coming in handy with having fun adventures with the kids in control.  (There are only about 452 blurry pictures of squirrels.)

So Eddy roared through the zoo.  It was a great day at the zoo.  One of my favorites so far, in a good line of greats there.  We followed the tigers' prints and the hung out with the gorillas and monkeys for a while.  Eliza would not be torn away from the baby monkey without a fight.

Eliza was adorable, as always.  This is a rare happy moment in the buggy.  Usually she's hollering to get out or about to fall asleep.  One extreme or the other.

Then we spent more than 20 minutes at the Komodo dragon habitat.  We had the place to ourselves, the dragons and us.  The kids were mesmerized by the forked tongues flicking in and out and the scary yawns and the beady eyes gazing back at us.  There were several large information posters that Davy absorbed.  Eddy was so concerned about where the Komodos would hid when the real dragons--with wings and fire--came and attacked.  Liza Bee caught on and whispered reverently "whoa!" and pointed at the glass.

I'm not sure where this bear will pop up next, but I hope we haven't seen the last of him!

Liberty and Trafalgar Square

 

Liberty in London is as cool a department store as you could dream of.  As expensive as can be, too!  We loved window shopping through the floors and seeing their Christmas display.  Got us totally in the mood for the season!  

Peering in the chocolate shop.  We passed on the uber expensive chocolate but were pleasantly surprised at Ben's Cookies across the street.

This happened.  No coaching, no posing.  Eliza just went up and took biggest brother's hand and the other brother joined in.  Magic.  This is why I continue to have my camera strapped on and ready at all times.

Spontaneous game of tag on the pedestrian-only street.

We popped into the National Gallery for only a couple galleries (and a toilet stop and gift shop browsing).  My favorite quote of the day was when we were outside the plaza by the lions and Eddy looked up and said, "Is that a museum?  I want to go to a museum!"  Oh, the brainwashing has totally worked!

Time for Tea with Cinderella and Friends

 

Cinderella
retold by Davy

There was this girl who had rags on.  She only had those.  Then a fairy godmother came and changed her rags into a beautiful dress.  So she could go to the ball.  She met a prince at the ball.  The prince tried to marry her but couldn't so he went to jail.  Then Cinderella lost her shoe.  Someone found it and that's the prince and he had to try it on everyone.  Yes, he finally found her.  And they got married.

 

An aside:  I found these again a couple weeks ago and realized that I wanted to finish getting them all up here before moving on to the next project.  Crazy to think it was last winter I was in the middle of this folly.  Liza Bee's grown so much since then!  She'd never stay still for a second now . . .  Glad I seized my chance.  :)  I hope you're enjoying these!  Only a few more to go live, as I get the chance.