Birthdays!

With so many January birthdays in the family, I thought I'd share a quick note highlighting our recent culinary delights. Penny is seen here enjoying the cake she picked out for Daddy's birthday. She helped to mix the ingredients and put them in the pan. She had contemplated the black forest cake, but instead went with a chocolate mousse, allowing for enjoyment of larger pieces with its lighter and fluffier nature. Daddy said it was an excellent choice. Dan is a big fan of chocolate (he has spent WAY too much time around girls since leaving home and even self-medicates with chocolate on occasion).

Here is the long-promised image of Penny's birthday cake. I was sick the day it was being decorated and rather than infect all of Penny's guests, I put Dan on the spot for decorating the cake. Despite my error in not leveling the layers (which led to a San Andreas effect under the fence line here), he managed to put together a lovely themed cake with some of Penny's toys. I thought it was pretty good. Dan definitely has some artistic talent in there, as demonstrated with his slightly more complicated decoration of Celeste's birthday cake back in England. Mmmm....now I want some cake.

Children's Museum of the Arts

We decided to celebrate MLK weekend by hanging out with our Flats friends on Sunday. It was a bit of a transit nightmare as the somewhat opinionated Penny is not quite as easy to get out the door as the Penny in a pouch used to be. Sundays are hard for buses because they're only every 30 minutes at best and that may or may not line up with a ferry departure, which is sometimes only every hour in itself. We managed to miss two buses and still get to the outskirts of Little Italy just 20 minutes late, which isn't bad considering.

Our exciting destination this week was the Children's Museum of the Arts. Not a huge museum, but certainly action packed. There were kids working in every medium it seemed, in various corners of the museum, and plenty of staff going around making sure everything was well-stocked. Penny had funny drawing a face - looks a little like Ernie in my opinion.

Here you can see Paul and Penny doing a bit of pointillism using some bingo dabbers. This is a pretty cool invention in the grand scheme. As paint goes, it dries fairly quickly, but it also still gives a very satisfying splash when applied to paper with enough force. I like Penny's aerial view of a fire circle surrounded by trees there. Ok, that may not be what she was going for, but it bears a striking resemblance in my book.

The performing arts were also represented at the museum. Penny tried her luck on stage once again. This time, she demonstrated her ability to project her voice and be heard over the din of the ball pit just to stage left. I'm not sure if this is "Streetcar Named Desire" or some other transit-related piece, but I was pretty impressed by her powerful little vocal cords. Of course, she had been practicing all the way there in every echoey tunnel and hallway we traveled through on our way to the museum. I felt a little bad for the other passengers. Man, I would be in some serious trouble if she weren't so darned cute. Most people just smile, ask her name, etc. instead of being terribly annoyed at the really loud kid shouting/singing in the already ridiculously loud and echo-filled tunnels and waiting areas.

After our visit in the museum, we stopped over at a local diner for some lunch. It was awesome getting to catch up with our friends, commiserate about being working moms and not being our most cheerful when we come home from work, and generally enjoy watching the kids have a good time. It was also pretty funny hearing the kids bid each other good-bye now that they can almost all talk. I know Penny tends to ask after her friends and looks forward to opportunities to play together, which is really fun to hear.

New Year Excitement

We had a fun trip home to Ohio for New Year's. Penny got to catch up with FCOR John, her long lost playdate buddy from while we were living in Ohio. Oddly enough, he only had a few hours before heading to the airport to go to New Jersey for New Years!

We also had one of our best opportunities for a play date with Indio, another of Penny's cousins. They are a month apart, but pretty much the same size and energy level. They had several rounds chasing each other around the house before settling in on the chairs for a bit. They usually took turns throwing themselves at the bean bag chair, but sometimes did it simultaneously too. They had such a blast together, Penny has been asking to "Play Indy" ever since!

Penny has definitely gotten the hang of opening presents. After she opened all of hers at each of the locations we visited, she offered her gift-opening services to anyone else who had not yet opened their gifts. Here she is opening Uncle Pat's gifts. She is quite efficient - fewest pulls necessary in many cases.

We rang in the New Year in good style, thanks to Jenny. She brought us some spiffy poppers (an English holiday treat). Each contains a crown, joke and prize. Penny was most impressed by the variety of noisemakers included. She walked around with this little yellow doo-hicky for days! Almost as good as the kazoo Daddy picked up at the parade a while back. All in all, a really fun trip.

I'm kind of excited about my new phone, ok not so new now. But, it has a pretty decent camera, so that's one less thing for me to drag around. Yay!