Babystar loooooves outings. She is basically a puppy. If you tell her she’s going ‘bye-bye’ she immediately jumps up and starts panting and wagging her tail. Just kidding. She runs to find her shoes and sits on the first step which is apparently her Official Shoe Step and yells and points at grown-ups until someone helps her get her shoes on.

Even if she isn’t yet wearing pants.

We have had a lot of fun outings over the last few weeks. The parks are free. (THANK GOODNESS THE PARKS ARE FREE. Or more accurately, thank you Arlington County’s liberal public works tax spending, the parks are free.) But not everything is free.

We went to Busy Bees twice recently — once with cousin V and once without. Babystar loves Busy Bees but I do not love paying $15 a pop now that she has turned one. We go much less than before, of course, but she is playing in more areas and getting braver, probably because her 3yo cousin is a little trailblazer.

We also saw Culture Queen at Busboys & Poets, which in theory is only $5 per kid. So $5. But their sweet potato pancakes are amazing and I ordered them with eggs and turkey sausage and a vanilla latte AND Babystar made a royal mess (because she is a Tower of Royal Power) so I tipped the poor server that got stuck in the kiddie room $10 so that morning’s total was $44.70. Worth it. It’s only once in awhile and did I mention that the sweet potato pancakes are SO FREAKING GOOD?

Finally, we attended a birthday party! Babystar’s first invitation. The party was adorably pumpkin-themed and the kids each got to choose and decorate a mini-pumpkin. So clever. So cute. So Babystar ignored all of that and mowed the grass instead. It was a toy lawn mower, at least. She was not into the party or the kids at all. She did enjoy a fruit skewer before getting tired and we sadly left before any cake and before the 1yo Party Girl opened her presents. We brought her sensory balls. I hope she likes them.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $12,387.09