During a cold, rainy day off of school our kiddos took a trip to Chucky Cheese’s!  During the trip Moxie said, “Ms. Debrah, I love you, this is the best day.” She spent a fair amount of tickets on weird little photo cards that have weird stuff on them AND a picture of her sweet little face.  Keen LOVED the rides.  I have no idea how people felt about the pizza.  Honestly, who loves CCs pizza?
Remember the WEIRD round the clock thing?  Yep that’s still there.

Pizza: the BEST way to finish fun with rides.

Chucky is her co-pilot

She drives standing.

Serious riders.

Less serious riders

Tailgating.

Still standing.

How long until she realizes she’s not actually playing the game?

Well Folks–Keen has been on the outside as long as she was in!  She has been breathing air as long as she was swimming amniotic fluid.  She’s a great little kid–her favorite person in the world is Moxie.  Second and third: Pili and Gyges.  She can surf along couches, eats all the foods, and has a thing for playing the piano.  She even waves bye bye and (sort of) says it.  She’s pretty great.

Babu came into town on Thursday.  You can tell these pictures are from Thursday because Moxie is covered in super fun preschool paint.  Anyway, he got to the house and Moxie immediately roped him into play time.  They built castles, made glasses and ears, and did some serious surgery removing crabs from Babu’s ears–all with Magnatiles!!

On Sunday, January 4th, just after nap time Moxie and Bibi came to the hospital to meet Keen.  Strider met them at the hospital entrance and Moxie came with a gift for her new baby sister (a soft monkey lovie).  Moxie was a little nervous to be in a new place but as soon as she saw Keen in the basinet she ran to her and asked to hold her.  She wasn’t shy about adjusting the baby’s hat, playing with her feet, and didn’t mind that Keen fussed a little.  

On Mother’s Day weekend we went to Baltimore for a stay-cation.  It was really fun.  We went with another family (Betsy, Bob, and Faye) and did the tourist thing.  We got adjoining rooms so that we could have parent time in one room and pack-n-plays full of snoring toddlers in the other.  To be honest, though, all of us were dead asleep by 9:30.  We rode a carousel, ate ice cream, went to the children’s museum, and just had a really good time.

Insert opening credits here.

The Queen

The Joker

Adventures in the toddler room

Dangerous adventure in a Egyptian Tomb

Builders or runners.  Either one.

Us as a threesome.

Kids cups, crayons, and ducks.  Roll credits.

This week we had a visitor: Aunt Bear (or as Mox says, “Beh”)!  She stayed with Mox and Jess while Strider went to a conference in Colorado.  It was wonderful.  We went to the zoo, a graveyard, on walks, to music class, and even survived because Bear was here.  Seriously.  It would have been a mess without her.

Mox and Bear check out a snake.

Watching the orangutan cross by.

She loved the goats so much she wanted  to join them.

We wrapped up the day in a mess.  

After a wardrobe change we walked around Oak Hills Cemetery 

Today, Rita did Moxie’s hair in a pretty cool way. I wanted to get a couple pictures of it for fun. So I decided to take Moxie outside. (Cool photography trick: take pictures outside where there is light.) 

However, Moxie had some conditions.

The first three were easily satisfied.  She needed a stick (to be obtained outside), a bottle of milk (of course), and absolutely no shoes.

The no shoes was definitely not negotiable, as she indicated by putting her finger to my mouth and saying “nooooooo.”  Not only was she not going to where shoes, I wasn’t even allowed to talk about it.  All said, though, this is was not an issue, though it was a little dicey when, later, we found this:
and this:

But that was all ok.  The real problem was her last demand.  This is best explained with a picture:
In fact, the hat requirement extended to the photographer too:

(The leaves are a whole other story.  One she has to tell, because I’m really not sure why she made us do that.)
Once, there was a dog.  The dog was very friendly, but wary of dinosaurs.  The triceratops really wanted to meet this dog, so she allowed herself to be turned into a little girl for a few minutes.  And that is how we caught a brief glimpse of her beautiful hair:
But not for long!  (These are taken not a minute after the last picture.)

For those curious about the hair, here’s a couple bad pictures, but they are the best I got showing the style:

After dinner, we went on another walk.  While the accoutroments varied in the specific, the spirit was the same.  A truck had just passed for the first picture.  She really likes trucks, especially the ones that wave at her.