A Robot and Her Mechanic

Today we met up with the Pierz Family for our annual Boo at the Zoo outing. As always we met up beforehand for the Petticoat Brunch at Denver's Bump and Grind Cafe where the food and, er... waitresses? never disappoint. This year we took robots to the zoo. We had originally planned to have four robots, but as time went on, we came to two realizations: 1) that neither Lila or Harper were going to tolerate such rigid costumes for long, and 2) all great robots actually need an equally great support crew. Harper and Lila were up for that challenge, and together they sported matching mechanic's coveralls and a full complement of tools. You'll have to head over to the Pierz blog for more photos. Between guiding our wandering robot and tracking down our curious, and fast, 14-month-old, I failed to capture a good photo of Lila, so be sure to check out their post and sorry Lila.

The robot costumes have turned out great. The kids love them and we got tons of complements. Viv and I have been worried that Marielle would be apprehensive about wearing the suit, so we've spent the last week getting her pumped up about the costume. By yesterday, she was really excited to wear it. Between us pumping it up and the complements from passers-by, we had to stop her on more than one occasion from saying out loud, "Everyone thinks my costume is sooooo cool." Alex and Marielle loved the attention, Harper loved chasing after her two robot buddies, and little Lila was more than happy to offer her mechanic support from the comfort of her own support team (Geoff and Colette).

And in case you were wondering. Yes, that is a real light bulb, and no, I wasn't concerned about it breaking, and yes, I should have been. Yes, the light bulb did shatter as my wife had predicted. Ellie's fall and the subsequent destruction of the light bulb led to one of the most impressive co-meltdown of two toddler-robots ever documented. Bye the end, they were each crying because the other was crying. However, after a quick reset, both robots were back online and all systems had returned to normal.