First Full Sentence!

Our little one is totally getting into more talking these days. All her words are in English... So not surprisingly in the language of Shakespeare, here is the sentences she delighted us with tonight at dinner:

'Mimi eat pasta' followed by
'Papai eat pasta' while pointing towards her dad, followed by
'Mamai eat pasta' while pointing towards her mom!

We will be working on the agreement piece another time, for now we know that either the Italian heritage is strong in this little one, or that we have to really diversify our diet!

Amélie in Elmo's Land

For Xmas this year, we decided to treat ourselves with a Jamaican vacation... The resort was great, with wonderful colors that complemented the incredible turquoise water:



We spent quite a bit of our time on the beach enjoying the sand, water and sun... More pictures to come, but first things first, what Amélie loved most by far was the Sesame Street Feast she had...

Seeing and hugging Elmo's picture:


Giving a high five to the full size Elmo:


Dancing with Cookie Monster:


Posing with Bert and Ernie:


And watching the incredible shows that all the characters participated in:

Amélie in Wintry Mix

It's not nearly as much snow as they have in the North East, but we have had our share of snow this weekend...

Amélie got to use her new snow suit, gloves, boots to brave the cold outside:



And it's never too early to have your kids help you with chores... So we had her help with snow removal on the car:

Tooth brushing!

Dad and I have been working a lot lately on tooth brushing...

What progress have I made... Dad was able to teach me to like the touch of the brush in my mouth (through conditioning from the sweet tasting kid toothpaste)...

Now, thanks to associative conditioning, I don't even need to have any sweet stuff to make me brush my teeth, the proud face of daddy is reward enough :)...

Cutest thing Amélie has said so far...

Amélie is starting to put sentences together, and so far the cutest thing was: 'Amélie Dancing' while performing a series of contorsions that some avant-garde choreographer would surely qualify as extremely post-modern progessivism!

As you can see, she is also becoming quite comfortable and good at performing the downward facing dog pose on demand:

Lack of inspiration...

My mom is struggling to post something new... Every night she checks my page and the ones from all of my friends, that is, the ones who have blogs... but tonight she's struggling to come up with something original or witty, so I'm just going to say hi and showcase my most common mood:

21 months

Today our little one turned 21 months... Here are some memorable moments:

The early days:



Visiting the Colloseum at 3 months:



Arriving in B-Town at 6 months:



Christmas with my family in Rio:



First steps (almost) on my own:



Summer fun... Rio-style:



And today, playing anonymous star with my glasses:

Hobbits!

Yesterday, we started watching the first DVD of the Lord of the Rings! My mom is such a big fan, she was all excited to explain the start of the story.



We watched the part when they explain the life of Hobbits. They are funny these hobbits, they like simple things and happily conform to the norms of their society. Mom says they are just like the Swiss... Now I want to go to Switzerland again, because I want to see if there are Swiss people with the same feet as Hobbits!

Hoosier adaptation!

When do you know you are adapting to Hoosierland?

You celebrate when IU beats Purdue and when the Colts win!

Guerre de la lolette!

Amélie nous fait une guerre de la lolette gigantesque ces jours... Elle demande sa lolette tout le temps... Elle a même compris que le meilleur moyen de l'avoir et de prétendre une fatigue extrême, comme ça papa et maman la mettent au lit avec ce trésor tant convoité...

Attention, pensez-vous qu'une lolette soit assez pour que Mamselle Pessoa s'endorme paisiblement!?? Que neni, il faut une lolette dans la bouche et une dans chaque main pour que mamselle consente à s'endromir, je ne vous dis pas combien nous jonglons pour satisfaire cette petite crevette.

Le matin c'est la fin du monde si on essaie de la faire descendre au salon sans ses précieux cargos... Mais comme elle sait que maman n'accepte pas qu'elle prenne sa lolette dans sa main pour descendre, elle vient de nous mettre au point un nouveau stratagème...



L'adage 'plus il y en a plus c'est bon' me vient à l'esprit, je me demande bien pourquoi...

Cultural adaptation...

Amélie seemed to be falling down quite a bit these days... So much so that I was really starting to wonder what was happening... Was she too distracted by things around her to pay attention to her walking? Was she drinking from a hidden reservoir of Vodka? Did she have some neuro-locomotor problems? I kept wondering what was going on...

This Sunday, I got my answer... We had a playdate with Rena, one of her classmates. While there, Rena's mom offered to sing 'ring around the rosy'... We all got in a circle, and Rena's mom started singing (I still have to get the lyrics right) and at the 4th line, it says 'all fall down', and Amélie joyfully followed Rena's lead to fall down on the carpet...

Now I know that, all this time, Amélie has just been perfecting her 'ring around the rosy' dance... I also know that I seriously need to learn more about these US kids' songs!

Halloween!

Pendant que maman est en voyage d'affaires à Orlando, papa et moi avons fait de notre mieux pour fêter Halloween... Cette année, j'étais une Dalmatienne:





Mais mon costume était moins confortable que celui que ma maman m'avait fait l'an passé...



J'espère que l'année prochaine, mes parents me laisseront enfin choisir mon costume!

Amélie imite Esmé

Amélie's version:



Esmé's version (6 months earlier)

Conclusions:
1) Imitation is the highest form of flattery...
2) Trilingualism is all about patience and approximate outputs...

Amélie Rocks!

Amélie est en train d'apprendre a faire des sauts sur place, c'est marrant comme tout à voir... Une démo:

Amelie speaks...

Hi everybody, this is Amelie again...

It's been a long time since I last wrote. By now I'm getting much better with this speaking thing, although it's not easy. I have to admit that Yang-Yang at daycare is a bit of a genious to be already speaking multiple-word sentences in English and Mandarin, and a little bit of Spanish even. I'm still at "nose" for nose, and "bouche" for mouth...

But today I want to tell you something else. It's no big secret at home: I love buses! You heard it right. Ok, choo-choo trains are still my favorite (a while back my dad and I watched one go by for more than 10 minutes, I kid you not; he tried to leave before it passed, no way I told him...). Ok, back to buses. They are awesome! I love their colors and shapes, they are so fun! Mom is a little easier to convince, sometimes I ask her (you know what I mean) to drive around and around when we come back from day care so that I can see ssooooooooo many of them, it's the best!! I even convinced dad once :-)... [My parents think that a trip to Lausanne or Rio will definitely be very 'a propos', there are far more buses there than in B-Town.]

Ah, I forgot to mention that I much prefer to pronounce "bus" in French, it's much more fun to make funny faces when your mouth is more contorted anyway!!

I don't know what it means about my personality, but if you know, do tell me, ok? Oh, I was going to ask, do you love buses too?

Funny faces

Amélie is now posing for pictures... It is getting hard to catch her smiling naturally these days.

With her cute bordeaux jacket from great-grossmutti:




With her new outfit from Rio:




Posing like a star in her hot ride:




And this is the only natural smile I could catch this week:

Language update

Amélie is starting to talk more, and her vocabulary is growing everyday... Here are the high frequency utterances we have observed (i.e. the stuff she says most often):

'wertur' - she wants to pick up her blanket (couverture) and go downstairs with it in the morning. Funny fact: when coming back from daycare, she sees the blanket and points to it saying 'bankie'...

'cheal' - only with dad to ask for her cereals in the morning.

'chaussu' - shoes are still a very big source of fascination for our little one. Everytime there is a pair in sight, she points to it and alterns between 'chaussu' and 'shoes', just to make sure you get want she says.

'wawa/leau' - she loves playing with water and starts knowing that she has more changes to get to play with it when she asks mom for 'leau'.

'woofwoof/doggie' - Amélie is crazy for dogs, either real or in the form of stuffed animals. She is very attached to her 'woogies', our family stuffed dog.

'moo/vach' - she knows the name of most of the farm animals, but her favorite is by far the cow.

'do-doi' - Portuguese for 'it hurts', we all caught pink eye while in DC, and we explained to her that we all had to put drops in our eyes because of 'do-doi'. Now she uses it to describe any booboo she gets.

'cars' - Her current favorite DVD, and when mom says 'Super Amélie, cars en anglais et voiture en francais', Amélie generally responds 'woatu', close enough :)!

'jus/suco/WWWOOOOOAAAAH': last one is used when the parents do not provide the requested juice fast enough...

Her favorite word?
Não - Of course! Note that it is said with perfect Brazilian Portuguese accent... We can only conclude that the language choice for this word must be based on the frequency of occurrence... mmmh time to beef up your discipline skills mom!

DC Trip

Papai got invited to review grants in our capital... So mom and I decided to play supportive family (read: get a free place to crash in DC)... Fortunately, dad could join us for our daily marathon-length walks...

We paid daily visits to the National Zoo, I even became a FONZ!

I loved the apes, and we even saw some who were hanging out outside:



My stroller was key in many of my activities -

Napping:



Posing in front of the Capitol:



Enjoying Chocolate Therapy from Ben & Jerry's:



Of course, I enjoyed lots of activities outside of my stroller too -

Playing star with my new sunglasses in the Hirshhorn's sculpture garden:



Riding the metro (man how cool it is to ride tchou-tchous):



And the best of all - my first ride on a Merry-Go-Round!



We had a great trip, can you tell?

Busy Bee!

Everyone who has lived with a toddler knows that these little things are incredibly high in energy and like to be busy... Want examples? Fine, here you go... Please forgive our sample size of one:

Toddler actively participating in recycling:



Toddler actively participating in cleaning tasks:



Toddler going down the stairs (and surely mentally preparing for the significant 5-minute commute to daycare):



Toddler trying to remain zen despite all stimulations presented to her:




Yeah right, toddler was just joking of course:



Thinking of zen, subject had shown early tendencies towards zen attitude...



The constant... Mood swings happening at a speed that we can't measure... Based on this experience, would we consider increasing the sample size to two? No way!

Pour l'anniversaire de maman...

J'ai fait plein de surprises a ma maman pour son anniversaire...

Pour commencer, jeudi je lui ai fait une petite conjonctivite... En fait je voulais seulement avoir la chance de passer plus de temps avec papa a la maison :)...

Et vendredi, j'ai double ca avec une fievre de cheval... Samedi, j'ai remis ca, de la fievre et je suis restee etonnamment calme... Je l'ai bien entendu fair expres, juste pour que samedi, on reste en pyjama et qu'on regarde Shrek toutes les deux...



Dimanche j'allais mieux alors on est allees a l'anniversaire de ma copine Merph. Elle a un an, et on s'est super bien amusees ensemble:



J'adore les chiens de Merph, tout le monde essaie de convaincre mes parents d'adopter un chien:



J'ai joue a cache-cache avec la passoire dans la voiture, j'ai pas arrete de rigoler durant tout le chemin:



Et aujourd'hui, comme le temps s'est rafraichi, ma maman m'a mis un nouvel habit tout joli:



Malheureusement, il n'a pas survecu mon premier essai a manger de la soupe a la tomate... Au moins on a une photo souvenir :)!

waw, waw

Much to the frustration of daddy, Amelie was not into water... That is, baths were a routine and OK, but Amelie did not exhibit the love of water that someone who grew up going to the beach all the time expects (demands?) to see. It's more like a religion... anyway. But more recently she finally warmed up to the idea and now enjoys her little inflatable pool! In fact, it's hard to get her out of there most of the time! Next, the Olympic pool and laps!

Shrekmania!

Our little Amélie is obsessed with Shrek... You want proof you say... Here you go:

6ish in the am - Amélie is waking up, holds on to her paci and doesn't want to let go of it - Strategy = say that we'll go and see Shrek when she leaves the paci in the crib... The paci is left in the crib before you finish your sentence, and you now have a very cooperative little one who is repeating 'Shrek' all the way till she sees his friendly face appear on screen...

5:30ish pm - Amélie is having so much fun in the playground at daycare that she doesn't want to go in the car - Strategy = say that we'll go and see Shrek when we get home... You should be here to watch how our little tornado of a girl transforms herself into what strongly resembles a contemplative Buddhist monk for the whole car ride home...

Of course, such adoration has led to some compromises on our part... At the supermarket, she insisted on buying these Shrek yogourts... With flavor names like Ogreberry and Donkeyberry Bash, how bad can it be?? Well all was well till she tried to eat some yogourt on her own:



Don't worry... I check her ears everyday to make sure they are not getting more and more ogery looking... With that yogourt color, I have been wondering about side effects too...

Visit to the Indy Zoo!

On Sunday, we took a trip to Indy (1 Hour drive) to go to the Zoo. We treated our little one with Shrek 2 (mom was not up to watch Shrek 1 for the 439,873,204,958,734,059,837th time so she bought Shrek 2 on Sat). Here are the highlights of our trip:

Amelie was at first scared by the Sea Lions, but found them fascinating afterwards:



She totally liked the giraffes:



But the most impressive was by far the swimming polar bear:

News

It's been ages since we last posted... Here are some of the latest news from the MidWest...

Amélie had a great time with Vovó:





Amélie is transitioning to a new daycare, which has a great playground with cars she LOVES:



I guess the lecture on drinking and driving can wait...



On the car topic, we just splurged on a New Blue Toyota Rav4... Best decision we've made in a long time :)! Pictures of our new ride will come soon.