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!

Learning to Crawl

When we were in California in August, Lenaïc was just starting to make efforts at crawling. He’d do this funny yoga stretch with the front leg bent and the back leg stretched behind him as he inched forward like an inchworm. Into September (at almost 9 months) he made more efforts at crawling, advancing to an army crawl. By mid-September he’s become a full-fledged crawler.

This is a new experience for us since Angelina never crawled. She was mobile, scooting everywhere on her bum, but her mobility was a bit more limited. Lenaïc, on the other hand, now has access to a whole new world of doors to open, CDs to pull off shelves, books to reach (and rip apart), cat food to eat, splinters to get in his hand (thanks to unfinished wood floors)….

A Day At the Beach

I’m a little behind on my blog posts, so it’s time to catch up. We didn’t want to brave the crowds by going away on Labor Day Weekend, but decided a trip to the beach was worth it. Although Texas beaches don’t quite match up to California beaches, at least we have *a* beach, and the water is warmer. Almost too warm.




For more photos, click HERE