Vignettes of a Meet-Up

He Had Her at "Hi, Curious Girl!"
Phantom has posted any number of times about Mr. Blue being teh fun daddy, and she is seriously understating his abilities to connect with kids. Although Curious Girl spent much of the meet-up being too shy to actually talk to any of the Scribbler-Blues, from the moment Mr. Blue leaned down to wave at her through the car window, she was smiling adoringly at him, and she wanted to play with him pretty much the whole time we were together. Anyone organizing a virtual birthday party for their child should definitely engage Mr. Blue and Politica to run the games, as together, they are pretty amazing.

It's A Small World
Turns out that Politica, I, Mr. Blue, and Phantom have some real-life connections (fortunately, we're all agreed on the marvelous qualities of these people--wouldn't it be awkward to discover that, say, your irritating neighbor is your bloggy buddy's best friend?). Also turns out that Mr. Blue and I lived in the same town for a while (although not at the same time). On the drive back home, we ran into more people who may well know these common connections--at a hotel hundreds of miles away from where either of us live.

Perhaps simply having agreed in advance that we are all shy people took the social pressures away (I did wonder whether Curious Girl's pre-meet-up observation, "Baby Blue is a girl? Then I can be her big sister!" wasn't raising the stakes a bit much). It seemed easy to talk.

All I Need is the Air That I Breathe...
LG, CG, and BB could have shared a single cupcake and still had leftovers. But there was no shortage of energy left for playing. I love having meals with people who understand my approach to eating and feeding.

Hey, kids! Let's Put On a Show!
LG, Baby Blue, and Curious Girl were simultaneously interested in each other and too shy to interact much at first, so mostly, they revolved around Mr. Blue for the first hour and a bit. By the time we needed to be almost leaving, the kids had organized a game of hide-and-go-seek which had great participation and interaction among the three of them. This photo has the three of them in action, looking for Mr. Blue. The lead up to the big game, though, was the show that LG and Baby Blue started doing a show for Mr. Blue and Politica. "Welcome, LG!" Baby Blue announced to the (imaginary) crowd. "LG is doing a show. Welcome, LG!" The show consisted mostly of knock knock jokes, which is good, as we needed some new knock knock jokes around our house. Curious Girl was telling me Baby Blue's joke (Knock knock/who's there?/ Car./Car who?/ Car go beep beep!) earlier today. Mr. Blue made a knock knock joke out of my university's acronym. Geeky academic knock knock jokes are endearing.

So it was a good day. Phantom and Mr. Blue didn't mind driving for an hour to meet us, and it was a real treat all around. One of the highlights of our trip. We'll figure out later how to explain to our children that it's not a good idea to meet up with people you meet online. Blogger meetups (all two of them that I've done so far) have been wonderful.