3rd Birthday!!

This is IT, the BIG day!! THE birthday of our big girl Amélie!!

Keeping in tradition with birthday 1 and birthday 2, we had lots of fun today:

We brought fresh flowers and stickers to do crafts with our day care friends, and we treated everyone to a medley of berries in waffle ice cream bowls that the kiddos all ate with great delight:




We arrived back at our house from day care to discover the wonderful surprise decorations Kim put on our porch over her lunch break (THANK YOU SOOO MUCH):


Then we opened gifts received from friends and family (even as far as Switzerland, merci mutti mutti et tata Aicha):


Of course, the birthday cake was THE big deal today!!! Amélie chose a Red Velvet Cake, that we all had for dinner tonight while skyping with Vovó, Vovô and then with Tia Cris (Happy Birthday TOO) + Mariaclara:


What a great celebration!

Spidermonkey in the house!

Kassidee was 4.5 when she showed Amélie this trick some time last year. Amélie was intrigued but couldn't quite master it. For sure, she didn't have the strength to stay up a few seconds. The other day, surprisingly, Amélie remembered this and had great fun seeing that she could now copy Kassidee!

Here's the short of it:


But if you really have the time to spare, here's the full version!

Got brain?

D: Amélie, what's inside your head?
a: Brain...?
D: Yes, your brain!
a: Yes, food for the baby to grow and grow!

Amélie's good friend, Rena, has a brother coming soon and Amélie now talks a lot about the baby in her (Amélie's, that is) belly! Growing, growing, growing.

Cold? Not really!

Recently, the temperature has been more mild, in the twenties (-5C) in the morning, going up to the low forties (3-5 C) in the late afternoon.

So Amélie decided that she wants to wear her crocs (sandals, more or less) with light socks. And today when we arrived to pick her up from day care, she was playing outside without a jacket, just with her shirt, not minding the cold at all...

Bottom line: The family in Rio is worried that she won't be visiting for a while, as she might simply melt in the heat of 90-100 (35C+) of that town in the summer!

Dinner conversation...

D: mmmmh, we have gnocchi for dinner tonight! Eat Amélie, you like gnocchi!

a: what? I don't want to eat 'yucki'!!!

Delivered with an expression that looked a bit like:

Transition to a Big Girl Bed!

Today is a BIG DAY... Amélie's big girl bed arrived!!!

As some of you might remember, our crib choice was basically based on safety... ConsumerReports.org won over our sense of style, and we reluctantly adopted the SAFE (yet ugly) crib into our household...

The very pregnant me decided to put the crib together in the living room, so much more fun to put a crib together while watching TV... But I found out after the crib was built up that it was too wide to go through the room's doorframe... So I had to build the crib twice, once in the living room and once in Amélie's room...

Amélie used her crib as soon as she came home from the hospital, all swaddled, and snuggled to prevent slides and colic:



After colic subsided, Amélie turned out to be a great sleeper! As usual for our low maintenance little one, all she needed was her collection of 5 pacis, Brazilian Lullabies CD, and all her friends (baby, Julia, doggie, kitty, kangoroo, and a few others) to happily catch some ZZZZZs...

Today, her room changed quite a bit, from baby room:


To big girl room:


SHE WAS SOOOO EXCITED! She played with her dad, she helped put the railing together and helped install it, she even put her pillow in the pillowcase...

We of course had a few conversations about how NOT to be a monkey jumping on the bed, so that we do NOT bump our heads... She was so happy to be in her big girl bed (with DORA bedding), we read our usual two stories with our usual music, and she went to sleep (without her paci!):


Her transition into her big girl stage is nearly complete:
toddler car seat (up to 100 lbs)? CHECK!
Big girl bed? CHECK (parents are very much hoping for low occurrence of toddler nocturnal visits to parents' bedroom)!
Complete switch to undies? IN PROGRESS :)!

Daddy's Birthday

Amélie is very excited about birthdays... This is surely due to the fact that she knows her upcoming 3rd birthday will be a big milestone...

Amélie will have a birthday cake, switch to a big girl bed, AND, drum roll: She will be able to ride the horses that go up and down on the merry go round at the Indy Museum! My oh my what fun things happen when you turn 3!

The problem is that Amélie doesn't understand that, despite all her attempts to ask everyday for her birthday cake, her dad had his birthday before her... That was a BIG deal... However, when she learned that she could choose her dad's birthday cake, all got better. She diligently looked at all the cakes, and knew that, no matter how she herself loved it, 'pink cake' was not really what daddy would like, so she wisely chose chocolate covered cheesecake!

Dad came back from a trip on his birthday and was greeted by a super excited Amélie who absolutely needed to show him his birthday cake as soon as he came in the door. She was very good with the singing:





Overall a great evening, but for sure, Amélie can't wait to have her own cake at the end of this month!

De la neige partout!

Eh ben dis donc, quelle semaine! Nous avons eu le plaisir de voir tomber 30cm de neige en 24H cette semaine! L'université était fermée mercredi, la première fois que ça arrive en plus de 10 ans...

Voici voilà quelques vues de l'évènement:

Chaise oubliée sur la terrasse:


Déblayage de la voiture:


Comme je me suis tordu le genou en jouant au volley, j'ai été examptée de déblayage YEAH!!!! Le genou va mieux, une atèle et pas de sport pendant 2 semaines devraient me remettre à neuf!

Le parc de la garderie d'Amélie:


En Bref, c'est tout blanc partout, alors on passe beaucoup de temps dedans, il fait un froid de canard (environ -10C est le max de la journée) et les gens ne savent pas très bien conduire dans la neige par ici! Bien entendu, Amélie sort toute emmitouflée ces jours:


Papa est parti ce matin pour une conférence au soleil (le veinard), et comme le temps s'est réchauffé (on va atteindre +5C aujourd'hui, miracle), Amélie et moi allons mettre nos pantalons de ski et aller faire un bonhomme de neige avec YangYang cet après-midi, les photos suivront!

Pour sûr, un petit chocolat chaud quand on sera de retour à la maison passera très bien!