Carnivale

Friday evening we decided to visit a local carnival. The proceeds went to the local fire department, and it was in a beautiful location (by the Long Island Sound in Mamaroneck).



Chloe and Aidan got to go onto a few rides, and they had a great time. The most amazing thing was the difference in Chloe's courage from a few months ago when we went to a similar carnival in Pennsylvania. At that time, she was very afraid of most rides, and would only go if Aidan came as well. This time, she wanted to go on every ride, alone or not. Here's her and Aidan together:



She's almost too big for this one:



And here she's by herself on a rollercoaster:



I also made a video of that very rollercoaster ride:

2009 07 Chloe in Rollercoaster from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

And here are the remaining photos (some taken by me, some by Linda).

Happy Birthday Chloe and Aidan

In a proud American tradition, we celebrated the 4th Birthday of Chloe and Aidan before it is actually happening (they turn 4 on June 30th). We hosted a garden party on Saturday in our back yard. Thanks to Anna's purchasing abilities we had acquired an inflatable water slide and an inflatable bouncer. So only the weather had to cooperate for the party to be a success. Considering that it had been raining for about 2 months straight we ended up super-lucky with the possibly first dry day of this summer.



Our guests were a mix of Chloe's and Aidans classmates, friends and neighbours. All in all we had 15+ kids and their parents. The water slide turned out to be the biggest hit.



All in all, we hope everybody had a great time. We were thankful that so many of our friends showed up. Here's a family picture including current and past child care.



And here is a link to all the remaining photos (some taken by me and some by Linda).

Pepsi Sculpture Park

We maximized a rain-free period of day's Father's Day to visit the Sculpture Park at Pepsico Headquarters in Purchase, NY. Here are a few pictures (shot with the iPhone 3G NOT S).

Vacation - Leg 3 (Duesseldorf)

We spent the last few days staying with my very good friend Matthias in Hilden. I hope he had as good as time as we did, considering that we caused a slight discoloration of his carpet as well as some trouble with his neighbours. The highlight of our stay was that I could go shopping at Peek and Cloppenbug in Duesseldorf, where I can find clothes that fit me well.

But kidding aside, the highlight of our stay was of course the BBQ on Saturday which Kai and Martina hosted. It was great to see so many of my German friends together, and cool to meet new babies and kids.

Here are a few highlights.

Everybdoy's enjoying food, drink and great weather:



Great to spend some time with my goddaughter Jadine (Matthias' little girl):



Matthias looking quite comfortable:



The rest of the photos can be found here.

Vacation - Leg 2 (Paris)

To continue the vacation post, the second leg of our recent Tour de Europe was Paris, France. It has to be said that vacation with the kids certainly is different. We spent a lot of time on playgrounds, and also made a park (Jardin de Luxembourg) a daily trip. That park was a children's delight. They had a huge playground, pony rides and a carousel so the kids loved it.

As for sightseeing, we pretty much walked everywhere. The kids walked at times, but mostly got a ride in our double stroller which worked out well.

Here are a few highlights:

At the Louvre:



Picknick in front of the Eiffel Tower:



Aidan's first pony ride:



Mommy gets a kiss, and Chloe attempts to smile:



And here is a link to the remaining Paris photos.

Vacation - Leg 1 (Herrenberg)

Our vacation was so long (for American standards) that I have to split the post into three. First we visited my parents (and sister) in Herrenberg. We had a nice few days with visits to the local playground, to Boeblingen and to downtown Herrenberg. It's always nice to be in Germany when the weather's nice.

Here's the day of our arrival. Anna's not quite over the jetlag yet...



My sister showing off her winning smile:



Chloe is always helpful:



And here's the link to the other photos. These are not all photos as I'm having problems with the upload to Flickr, but I'm working on it.

Vacation

We're back from our vacation. While I'm still uploading and weeding out photos and videos, here's a preview of what's to come:

Chloe's May Show Rehearsal

Chloe's school has a May Show next week. Unfortunately we won't be able to be there which Chloe is pretty disappointed about. However, Anna made it to a rehearsal today and took the following video. Her class is performing a Polish dance, so I guess the music and singing is a Polish song. Chloe is wearing the black pants and purple top:

2009 05 Chloes Dance Rehearsal from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

Exciting Weekend / Random Picture

Friday we all played outside in our backyard, and also finally got to meet our neighbors a little better. They have a four-year old (Henry) and a seven-year old (Katherine). Hopefully we'll be able to spend more time together during the summer.

Yesterday we met our friends Heike and Axel and their son Lennart (5 year old) for lunch, and the result was our first sleep-over. They were invited to a grown-up party and so Lennart stayed with us from Saturday to Sunday. We had a good time and Lennart was a super-easy guest.

Sunday I didn't make breakfast for Anna for Mother's Day, but I bought it from Starbucks. And in the afternoon my friend Mark who's getting his PHD in Cambridge, UK visited us.

And I managed not to take a single photo the entire weekend. However here's an iPhone shot of Chloe and Aidan a few weekends ago in Ocean Grove:

Chloe's First Car

So we thought with Chloe being almost 4 it's time for her first car. To be more precise, Anna picked up this electric car from Craigslist for free. The only caveat was that the battery was dead. Well, $60 later we had the following experience yesterday:


2009 04 Chloe in Car 1 from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

And here is Aidan's attempt. He just doesn't manage to press the foot firm enough onto the gas pedal. Don't let the picture below discourage you, there is an actual movie.


2009 04 Aidan in Car from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

And here are two more of Chloe:


2009 04 Chloe in Car 2 from Christian Pache on Vimeo.


2009 04 Chloe in Car 3 from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

Maddie's Birthday

One week late, but here it goes. Chloe and Aidan were invited to Maddie's 2nd birthday party.



They had a great time. There were lots of activities.



And of course there was pizza.



And here's the birthday girl:



And here's the link to all the photos I took. Unfortunately, I ran out of SD card space before the cake was presented. In our increasingly chaotic household (or as I'm getting older) I misplaced my 8GB SD card, so I had to survive with 2*1GB, which is not that much for today's cameras. Anyway, I guess that's a good excuse to visit J&R one of these days...

Scooter Fun

As I had Friday off, and Chloe was off of school, we drove Aidan to his school and then headed to Target. I got Chloe a Barbie scooter because it was on sale. We didn't get a helmet because we got one from cousin Katherine in the past. Here's Chloe trying out the scooter. The two almost-crashes indicate that she still has a little learning to do. Also note the beautiful German car in the background...


2009 04 Chloe on Scooter from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

And after Chloe was done, Aidan tried on the helmet. Meanwhile, we cleaned up what looks like an old school-desk which we inherited from the previous owners of the house, and Chloe is playing school. The Wang's may remember the car that can be seen in the background of this video:


2009 04 Aidan with Helmet from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

Weekend in Ocean Grove

We spend the weekend in Ocean Grove, and it was a nice one. We have all gotten over our colds, the sun was out in full force, we even managed to go to the beach. I took a few pictures with my iPhone as I was too lazy to bring my camera.

Here are Anna and the kids at the beach:



Aidan had a great time, he was playing with the sand, and at some point started making a sand-angel:




And Chloe posed for a photo as well:



The other discovery we made was the recent opening of a premium outlet mall nearby. Needless to say we went there and did some shopping. Here I'm killing some time while Anna and Chloe are trying on clothes at Banana Republic:



We also stopped at the Sony store and bought a refurbished portable DVD player. It works:



The kids are both fascinated and distracted. This will be very valuable on our impending trip to Germany and Paris in May.

Random Video

I feel guilty (yet again) that I haven't posted in almost a month. So here's a random video taken when we were in the Bronx Zoo last year. It's Chloe's experimentation with gravity...


Untitled from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

Photoshoot

Anna 'hired' me this evening to take some headshots of her because she's going to be speaking at some conference, and she needed a photo. While at it, I took some photos of Aidan and Chloe. Here are a few that are somewhat cute:

Aidan Progress

Something I want to share about Aidan: Yesterday we had one of our typical recession dinners: Anna mixes various frozen Trader Joe's stuff creatively together to create a new meal. Chloe keeps saying: 'Good cook mama' and I have to agree.

So here's a plate of ravioli, some chicken and vegetables in front of Aidan, and I'm about to feed him when he vigorously protests. I wonder, because Aidan never rejects food. Anna finally suggests that he doesn't want to be fed. So I put some food on a fork and put the fork in front of Aidan, and needless to say he grabs it and starts eating. He cannot yet target food very well with the fork himself, but he moves the fork to the plate and I have to assist with getting the food on the fork.

Next I want to help him to get some more ravioli on the fork, and he protests again. He takes his left hand and he points to some carrots on the plate. I was blown away. Not only is he feeding himself with the fork, but he's also telling me what he wants to eat next.

Unfortunately I didn't have my video-camera handy, otherwise I would have made a little film. However it was a moment worth sharing with everybody.

Ocean Grove Weekend

Last weekend our contractors kicked us out of our house because they needed a weekend to re-paint our kitchen. So we decided to go to Ocean Grove. It was a nice trip, almost felt like a mini-vacation. Unfortunately it was cut short because we forgot Aidan's seizure medication. So we only stayed one night. However, Chloe was inspired to provide some dancing entertainment. Here she goes:


2009 02 Chloe Dancing from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

There are some other videos which I'll upload to Vimeo sooner or later as well. Interestingly these days I don't seem to have the energy anymore to take photos. The only reason why I take videos is because I got this cool FlipVideo MinoHD camera which is tiny and takes reasonable videos. It doesn't have a zoom, which is somewhat limiting, but to compensate for that the low light performance is pretty good, so taking indoor videos is easily possible. Best of all, it takes MP4 and has built-in USB to connect and upload video to the PC. No post-processing required. Just copy to PC and upload to Vimeo and that's it.

Playing in the Snow

I had a little posting hiatus because of illnesses. First I got sick two weeks ago, and then last Saturday it hit Chloe. She had fever, runny nose and cough, but now she's almost back to healthy (a little cough is left-over). So today we went to have brunch at Balthazar's in Soho with some friends. On our drive home, Chloe and Aidan napped and when we arrived back in Larchmont, they were full of energy for some play in the leftover snow. So while we don't have any hills in our backyard, I ended up pulling them around on a sled. They had fun, even though Aidan fell off once or twice. And I got a good workout out of it.


2009 02 Sledding from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

While we're at it, I found the following video of Chloe making a snow-angel from a few weeks ago:


2009 01 Snowangel Chloe from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

And here's to show how much fun Aidan has in the snow:


2009 01 Aidan in Snow from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

Swimming Class

Yesterday Chloe went to her first swimming class. Last Tuesday she had to show off her skills (or lack thereof) and was promptly assigned to the beginners class (surprise!).

And so Saturday we went to the pool, and Chloe got her first lessons. There were tons of kids in the pool, four per instructor. Chloe liked it very much and she's looking forward to her next lesson.

Here are some videos:


Untitled from Christian Pache on Vimeo.


Untitled from Christian Pache on Vimeo.

Chris-Chris-Time

It's Christmas again!



Chloe likes to call it Chris-Chris. We started with going to church on Christmas Eve at 5PM. Our local catholic church had a familiy mass. There was such a large crowd, we were in a secondary room where they had a video transmission of the mass from the actual church. It was nice because that's where most of the parents with kids were, so it was quite noisy and entertaining.

Afterwards, I made cheese fondue.



It was a little chaotic because our fondue pot was still in the basement and it took Anna and I a while to find it. But it was delicious nevertheless, and may become a Christmas tradition. Even though Anna claims that we'll have regular (meat) fondue next year.

Afterwards, we all (i.e. Chloe, Aidan, Anna, Linda and I) gathered around the Christmas tree and the unwrapping began.



Everybody was happy with their presents, and the kids finally got to bed around 10PM.

On Christmas day we just relaxed during the morning, and visited Anna's friends Abha and Wilhelm and their kids Mila and Johan for dinner.

All in all another enjoyable holiday. More pictures can be found here.