C'est MON anniverSAI-REEUH!

Eh oui, il y a un an que je suis venue au monde... Cette première année a été mouvementée... En voici un petit résumé:

En plus de nos voyages en voiture, j'ai déjà pris le train, le bateau et même l'avion... Je suis déjà allée en Suisse, en Italie, et au Brésil...

Je sais faire des sourires de toutes mes 6 dents... Mais mon arme secrète pour charmer tout le monde, c'est mes yeux de chat, les mêmes que Mutti Mutti et Joshua!

Je marche avec de plus en plus de confiance, malgré les quelques chutes que je ne manque pas de faire, histoire de pimenter les jours de mes parents... Je suis maintenant dans la classe des trotteurs à la garderie, je suis petite pour mon âge mais les plus grands que moi, ça ne me fait pas peur du tout!

Mais ce que je prèfère par dessus tout c'est danser, la samba est ma musique préférée pour le moment.

Pour mon premier anniversaire, mes parents m'ont offert mes propres versions des objets que je préfère: un téléphone portable et un appareil photo... Ils doivent sûrement croire que ça me prendra un moment pour comprendre la différence entre ces jouets et les objets que je convoite depuis des semaines... Ils peuvent toujours rêver! J'ai aussi eu droit à mon premier gâteau... Un délicieux muffin banane et noix, miam miam!

Lenguej

Hi everybody, this is Amelie here...

I've been mening to write about something, I think they call it "lenguej". This is so messy! I have to admit that I am very confuzed, haven't been able to utter a single woord in a consistent way even tho I am almost one year old! By now I shoudl know at least "papa" and "mama", but I still haven't cracked that ones.

The problem, I think, is that wheel al my friends have ben practicing their Ingrish, my parents came up with a brilant idea of teaching me 3 languages at the same time! Well, they have been trying Portugues (dada) and Frensh (mama) on me, and people at day care try this thing people call Ingrish (it's prety simpl minded language, actualee).

I have to say that if I were to invent lenguej I would have done it quit diferently. If you ask me, they relly come up with an absurd seestem. The right thing to do would have been to create something that has a one-to-one mapeeng (one woord, one meaning), but some jenius tought that one-to-many or many-to-one was not enough and though that they should to do it many-to-many, how propestorous!

I herd my mom teling my dad of kids that taken 3 years to master this thing. I sure hope it doesn't taken that long with me, I have so much totel my parents. They're nice an all, but they get more than alf of what I want wronged (and this is after one year!).

This is geting too longe, I'll live to another time to tel my ideas about lenguej, how people should be using some formal gremmar like they've worked out in computer cience... I come up with a few models, acteuly.

I'm going to sleep now, boa noite!

Spirited Child!

Amélie recently started visiting the toddler room. Surprisingly, every time we were asking the teachers how she was doing during the day, they would say that she was playing quietly on her own... Given that this almost never happens at home, we were wondering whether they were indeed talking about our little one (and if so, what could we do to have her behave like this at home?!)...

But before we could make the dream of a quiet child at home come true, the teachers reported today that they were starting to get worried about Amélie: Indeed, our little princess started escalading whatever she could climb on, and once on top, she would throw her arms up in delight (and in the process compromise her balance that resulted in a situation in which potential of injury suddenly grows exponentially...) Now that sounds more like our girl... Sure sign that she now feels more comfortable being herself in the toddler room :)...

Black eye :-(((

Amélie had been toddling around perilously for some time now, but last night she lost her balance and, tchibum, banged her head pretty badly by the window sill. Actually, no, she banged it just to the side of her left eye and woke up this morning with a black eye poor thing... That is, after wailing for some good stretches of the night, probably with a throbbing pain.

But this morning, aside from the mascara, she woke up in a great mood and was smiling like the world was actually a wonderful place!

This picture doesn't do justice to the damage, but is here for the record:

Arctic days!

Il fait un froid arctique par ici!!!

Le plus marrant est que tout le monde me répète à longueur de journée, mais vous qui êtes de Suisse, vous devez avoir l'habitude du froid... Je pense que la moitié des gens ici ne savent pas vraiment que la Suisse c'est pas la Suède et que chez nous, on a eu la bonne idée d'habiter dans les vallées où il fait plus chaud... Enfin bref, la meilleure preuve c'est celle donnée par les nombres:

Lausanne, ma ville natale: 48F (ou 8C)

Bloomington, la ville où on vit: 1F avec le vent (ou -17C)... ou comme on dit en bon français... Purée on se les gèle!!!!!

La cerise sur le gâteau: il fait plus chaud à Rochester qu'ici... 3F avec le vent (ou -16C)

J'vous l'dis, y a pas d'justice...

Ice Ice Baby!

The university was closed for the morning today, wise decision with the amount of ice that was on the road... It was a strange and pretty sight, especially the ice covered trees in the sun:



Today was also Valentine's day, and Amelie was all dressed up for the occasion - not really visible here, but her pants were pink with different heart patterns all over and her red top has a little bird that sings 'tweet heart':



Happy Valentine's day everyone!

I am taking a walk with mom...

We are exploring the house:

Ice storm and other fun encounters!

Today was snowy and slushy... Tonight, everything outside is covered in ice, poor trees:


Amélie was not her usual self today, she was quite cranky and did not want to play at all... But she accepted to take a good and relaxing bath, allowed us to cream her and fell asleep early... We hope that the concept of 'sleeping through the night' will become a reality for us... soon... Is there anything sweeter than your child... asleep?


Good night ma chtite!

Salut tout le monde

Enfin, enfin voici le nouveau blog d'Amélie!!!!!

Comme Amélie a bientôt un an, on a décidé qu'il était temps de s'y mettre, on espère que vous allez tous bien vous amuser en découvrant le monde de notre petit bout de chou!

La grande nouvelle est que la prunelle de nos yeux s'est mise à marcher vraiment aujourd'hui... Jusqu'ici elle préfèrait nettement aller à quatre pattes à la speedy gonzalez, mais maintenant qu'elle a compris qu'elle pouvait porter des choses en marchant, elle est toute contente de nous montrer que la méthode bipède c'est pas si mal... Elle adore aussi danser et dès que nous aurons pu filmer ses exploits, on vous les montrera!

Son papa est moi on essaiera de blogger quelque chose toutes les semaines, et on se réjouit de recevoir vos commentaires. Sometimes I will post in French sometimes in English, it will give you all a taste of our multiligual life here in B-Town.

I'm finally walking!

Ok, we were a little slow to get this blog started -- Amelie is almost a year old -- but we finally got to doing it.

It seems appropriate that she started walking today! Well, if you have kids you'll know that it doesn't work that way, but today seems like a good day to claim so because not only is she taking more steps by herself (14 at one point! yes, we counted...) but she finally seems to prefer to forgo the super-efficient crawling that she's developed and just walk!

We'll try to come back every week or so and post something here and entertaining some of you who must have way too much time on your hands if you're reading this. Ah, you'll have to polish your French as well because we will need to alternate between English and French (although Amelie is learning Portuguese as well, that language is of admitted dubious utility... sorry if you're attached to it).

Amelie: by the way, this is how much I love my dad for starting this blog!