Holidays with Family

Quotable Quotes 2010

Christmas Eve "Santa has a ranch...in the ocean."

Christmas Eve Morning "It's snowing!!! That means we can open presents now!"

on the flight to Switzerland (and again in the car on the way to her cousins' house): "Papa, don't tell Mael and Gilles I pick my nose."

On a very sunny 88F December day in California, after putting up the Christmas tree: "When is it going to snow? If it's Christmas it has to snow!"

On one of our flights: "I'm not very good at sleeping but my eyes are good at closing."

On Lenaïc's birthday:
Me: "We're going to have a little party on Lenaïc's actual birthday, just you, L, Papa, and Mommy."
Angelina: "No! I want a BIG party!"
Me: "We already had the big party."
Angelina: "We need ANOTHER big party! I only like BIG parties. Not little parties!"
Yup, she may look identical to an Allegrini, but she definitely inherited the Rohr ...and Beltran genes.

Dec 2
Angelina "Mommy, I want a baby sister."
Me "Well, what if you get a baby brother instead?"
A: "no, I want a sister, like Dora. "
me: "I'm not sure I can promise a baby sister."
A (brimming with excitement): "I know! Papa can help you!"

Nov 30 "Mommy, I don't love any boys. I just love Wiley and Angus."

Nov 24 Mommy! It's raining leaves!"

Nov 20 Angelina fell and busted her lip. Papa offered chocolate to make it all better. 30 minutes later, in a very sad voice "Mommy, my lip still hurts. Can I have more chocolate?" I told her if it continues to hurt, carrots will make it better. Funny, it's all fine now.

Nov 14 Angelina diligently reading the safety instructions (her 4th plane is as many days). Attendant shows her the O2 mask and thinking Angelina is worried says "Don't worry, in my 26 yrs we haven't had to use this." Angelina responds "Can we land on the water? I want to use the life jacket and slide!"

Nov 10 You can take the girl out of Southtown, but....
In California, I ask "Angelina, would you like to go to the playground?"
Angelina responds with excitement "Oh! We're going to Friendly Spot?!"

Upon seeing that I'd framed her artwork (a series of sitck figures with funny heads), Angelina announced "Can you write the title on it: 'The Many Faces of Angelina'?"

Nov 2 "Mommy, I'm still a little bit sick."
"What's wrong?"
"I had too much candy the other day." she says with her mouth full of chocolate...

"Mommy, there's no milk left, only shakes."

Oct 16 "Don't call me Angelina. You have to call me Spicy Sparkle."

And the next day:
Angelina: "Just call me Spicy."
Me: "Not Spicy Sparkle?"
Angelina: "No. I'm just Spicy."

Angelina: "Mommy, does your bed only fit 3 people?"
Me: "Yes, honey."
Angelina: "You need a bigger bed for all kids to fit."

on Chalk it Up day in San Antonio Angelina: "What time is it? It's Chalking the Street time!"

Heard on the way to school today:
(1)"Mommy, what animals eat their poop?"
(2) Passing Ft Sam Army barracks*: "Mommy, is that where princesses get married?"
(3) "Mermaids don't live in castles."

"Papa will fix it, he can fix anything!"

"Mommy, I need a big brother. "
"Wylie's not really my brother. He's Felice's brother. I have a little brother but I need a BIG brother."

"Mommy, I'm going to teach you French so you can talk to Papa."
"Thanks Angelina, you speak French well. What are some words to know?"
"Chocolat!"


Angelina: "Mommy, I want to go Waterboarding!"
Me: "Waterboarding? What's that?" (not something most kids ask for...)
Angelina: "You know! Skateboarding on the water!" (aka surfing)

My California Girl, in distress: "Mommy! The sun is gone! Where is the sun? Suuuuun! Come back Sun! Mommy needs you to help dry the laundry!" (she's also energy conscious as well as sun-worshipping) then "I know! Let's go on an airplane to get closer to the sun! Suuuuun! You're not being very nice, we need you to come back!"

On her birthday, July 3, 2010: "Mommy, my name is not Angelina, you have to call me 'Princess.'"

Angelina: "Those DUDES are being bad! The dudes need to go in time out!"
(following me complaining "Come on Dude!" about someone blocking the intersection)

Happy Birthday Little Monster!

One year ago today (not until about 10pm), this little creature entered our lives and changed it forever. For the better.

Happy Birthday Lenaïc! Thanks for choosing us to be your family!


And some One Year stats, as of Dec 10: 29in tall, 22lbs 12 oz. Short and fat!

How does a year go by so fast?

And when did my tiny little baby become a monster toddler?

One year old. ONE. How did that happen so fast? It was just yesterday I was sitting here 38 weeks pregnant, trying to finish things up and hoping the little one held off at least until the due date of Dec 25. He decided this place was just too much fun he needed to join the fray early, on Dec 9. And now he's ONE.

If I was a more organized mom I'd have some cool slide show of his first year, but since we're still editing years 1-4 of Angelina's video in addition to Lenaïc's first year, that's going to have to wait.

It's been an incredible year for all of us. Angelina has learned to love (and hate) being a big sister (but mostly love). We've learned to handle 2 kids -ok, so we haven't really figured that out, but we're trying. Lenaïc went from struggling to gain weight in his first few weeks of life to bursting off the charts (he's in 18 month clothes now and some of those are already too small). He zooms all over the house on his hands and feet (he crawls too, but he has this funky yoga position he likes on his feet instead of knees, and "walks" all over like that, even better if he has two small cups in his hands). He pulls up. He likes pushing things as he "walks." He hasn't figured out words yet but has his own way of talking. He loves Chakapu (our cat) and big sister Angelina, he loves parties and friends. He loves Mommy and Papa - the look on his face when Papa walks into the room is enough to melt the hardest heart. (He is happy to see mommy, too, but I'm convinced he just sees me as a meal source)

He likes to "help" unload the dishwasher, though we've taught him to "help" by closing the door instead. He likes to unload every cabinet in the house, but I can't fix that yet. He likes balls and cups and plastic containers. He LOVES lids. Metal lids, who needs cymbals when you can use Mommy's pots?


He is full of laughter and love. Even when he's cranky, all we have to do is sing a silly song or clap our hands and he starts to laugh.


The old poem clearly didn't have it right for Lenaïc. He's a Wednesday Child. Woe is the farthest thing from his existence.


Happy Birthday my Brightness of the Sun. You and your sister make this world a better place for all of us.

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.[1]

Let the Fiestas Begin!

Me: "We're going to have a little party on Lenaïc's actual birthday, just you, L, Papa, and Mommy."
Angelina: "No! I want a BIG party!"
Me: "We already had the big party."
Angelina: "We need ANOTHER big party! I only like BIG parties. Not little parties!"
Yup, she may look identical to an Allegrini, but she definitely inherited the Rohr and Beltran genes.


Festivities have begun with a birthday party this past Saturday for all our San Antonio friends.


Next up, a California celebration!

My awesome Husband

Latest house project, or why I've been a single parent for awhile.....Frédéric has been working every weekend for the past few months on my birthday present. To see it,go HERE

A Whole New World to Explore

A quick 4 day trip to Nanny's house and how many cupboards can a little boy empty?





There was also the drawer with the DVDs/videos, but I missed that picture.

Of course, as we know this is usual behaviour at home:


More CA pics to come.

Halloween Fun

I've always been sort of so-so on Halloween. It's fun once you get into it, and I've certainly hosted my share of Halloween parties, but my lack of a creative gene has meant feeling less than enthused about costumes.

This year, Angelina wanted to be Tinkerbell. In my "now-I'm a Stay At Home Mom I must be a domestic goddess" mode, I decided to make her costume. I like to sew, I am tolerable at it, but just barely. Weeks of work and more than double the cost of buying a cheap Target Tinkerbell costume, and I didn't take pictures! (I am sure someone did, so hopefully I can post soon)

All that focus on Tinkerbell I neglected Lenaïc's costume. Fortunately Babies-R-Us had all of ONE costume left, on clearance, in his size (sort of...it was a bit small but worked long enough for a picture).


This turned into weeks of Halloween activities. First, the KWAKs (King William Area Kids) Pumpkin Carving and Dia De los Muertos party last week. Anyone who still thinks there aren't any kids living downtown needs to show up to one of these events: kids galore! Again my lack of artistic skills show, so I turned over pumpkin carving to our neighbor Rick, who used Angelina's drawing on the pumpkin to cut. Turning out pretty impressive! Alas, that pumpkin didn't survive our 80F+ week so Frédéric and Angelina carved another one on Halloween Day.


And then came the costume parties. On Saturday, a boy from Angelina's class was hosting a party (or rather, his parents were). btw - we love this new school and the families there! Angelina has been talking about this boy A LOT, so it was nice to meet his family, as well as many other kids and their parents. Dragging her home was not easy. Angelina never wants to leave a party.

And then came Halloween Night. In years past, our neighborhood had been inner-city ghetto. Not a nice place to be, esp. for kids. Which follows that few kids did trick or treating. Our first few years here, we rarely had any kids come by and so we hadn't bothered to take Angelina out here either. Last year we went to King William, the next 'hood over, which was fun, but overwhelming: Truckloads of kids, many teens looking pretty scary, streets with far too much traffic. So this year, a neighbor who happens to be the mother of two of Angelina's playmates suggested we bring Halloween back to Lavaca. And so we did.

Coordinating with a handful of other families with small kids who preferred to trick or treat in Lavaca, we assured a critical mass of kids and a critical number of houses to give out candy.
We started with a pre-party at our house - a chance for the kids to check out each other's costumes,



for the littlest ones to have some Halloween fun, and to fill them up on healthy dinner and snacks (carrots, apples) before heading out into the 'hood for candy. Turned out great! In addition to our pre-assigned houses, we came across many others handing out treats who were surprised to see so many kids, and happy for it. Also happened upon a number of other kids out, so we didn't single-handedly bring Halloween back to Lavaca, but we put in a pretty strong effort!

The Rohr-Allegini Cloning Experiment

We are scientists afterall, so perhaps it's not shocking we'd conduct our own little experiment with cloning and genetics.

At least, that is how it woul appear...




(Lenaïc has straight hair like my brother Albert instead of my curls, otherwise, he's a clone)

Genetics Experiment

The Birthday Model

Ok, so it has been awhile since Angelina had a birthday, but we finally got her to pose a bit in the presents from GranPapa Marcel and Granmaman Josiane in Switzerland.




And today she wanted to make a cake with flowers, just because.





She definitely has a style all her own!

The Many Faces of Lenaïc

Learning to crawl comes with its downside: everything that can be pulled down, will be pulled down. When I inevitably yell "Lenaïc! No!" he looks up at me with the cutest grin as if to say "Who? me?"

And then there's food. I confess, I have given up feeding him with a spoon. He much prefers to feed himself. It's all part of learning right?



Bear with me while I try to figure out a better way to show multiple photos (these tiles didn't come out so well, the original pics are better)

Who me? What could I be up to?


See? Nothing there!

Ummmmm, caught?


Oh well, it tastes GOOD!



Wait, maybe not so good.



hahahaha! Gotcha!

Camping!

We have discovered the joy of Family Camping. Despite backpacking for much of my adult life, I feel like a newbie when it comes to car camping. Especially with kids. Angelina loves camping. LOVES it. She is so excited to help Papa set up the tent and she asks to go all the time. We’ve been trying to make use of our State Parks Pass, so this weekend we checked out Colorado Bend State Park.

It took us 3.5 hours on a Friday night to get there, no short trek. The last 25 miles we drove into the sunset in the middle of nowhere, with spectacular views. The final 10 miles in the dark on a gravel path. It all felt so isolated, until we made it to the campground bustling with people. A nice area for camping near the Colorado River, but camping in Texas is so different from the west or the northeast. I guess it’s due to fewer trees, as when I’ve been car camping elsewhere, the campsites tend to be spaced out a bit with lots of trees in between. Here it’s like a big field with the occasional tree. No real privacy. Fortunately when you have kids, that can be a good thing.


We hiked to Gorman Falls (previously open only by tour guide, now anyone can hike it). An easy path until the very end when you have to scamper down very steep rocks. With two kids. It was well worth it, as the falls were stunning and so different than anything I’d seen in Texas:deep green moss covering rocks is not a common sight in this arid land.



When we got back to the campground, we discovered something most appealing: two families of kids had set up two spaces over from us. Angelina has never met a kid with whom she didn’t want to play. So in a matter of minutes she wandered over, introduced herself, and asked if she could join the 2 6 year old girls, 3 yr old girl and 3 yr old boy.





Later we took what we thought was a short walk to the end of the campground but turned into a 1.5 mile walk (that’s what happens when you don’t look at the map closely) to a spring-fed pool. Whoa! This was amazing. The pictures should tell it all.

Happy Birthday Ruby!

Angelina has a lovely little friend named Ruby who just turned 4. And thanks to neighbor Felice, she has a new princess dress. Though princesses were not the theme of the party, Angelina was insistent that she MUST dress up in a pretty dress for Ruby’s birthday. We love Ruby!