Fancy Pen Tricks

This one is for all my work friends (at least the ones that have had to sit near me in an office). Carolina will be putting you all to shame in no time.

(btw, the whole “I am Camila” thing is just a little game she plays. Not like she’s psycho for constantly pretending she’s her cousin or anything…)

 

November 10, 2009. Tags: . Videos. Leave a comment.

Sunday at the Pool

Now that summer’s officially on (or at least the sun seems to think so), everyone was out in full force around the pool. I’m not a huge fan of apartment living, but after 6 years in the same building, and 3 of them with a rather rambunctious princess, it turns out you really get to know everyone. So, an hour of drink-your-milk-put-on-your-bikini-ok-fine-your-one-piece-now-your-flip-flops-ok-no-flip-flops-yes-you-are-snow-white later, and a couple of flights down, and we found ourselves surrounded by 5 or 6 of Carol’s pool buddies and their families. I’ll have to remember to dust off that floating cocktail bar proposal that didn’t quite get passed through the council last year…

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Mariana, Carolina and Manu... not quite looking at the camera

 

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Carolina Cousteau uses her special lenses to analyze the chameleon's paw

 

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The captain always goes down with the ship. Fortunately, Carolina is not the captain.

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...except when she wants to be.

 

November 10, 2009. Tags: . Photos. Leave a comment.

Recent Beach Pics from my Cell

Summer just hit here with a vengeance! This is the first sunny November that I can remember, and we’re trying to make the best of it. We headed out to “Baixo Bebê”, where all the snazzy 30 or 40-something parents go to let their kids run wild in the beautiful but somewhat septic Leblon sands. We didn’t take our camera, but luckily Dada remembered that these portable talking devices everyone’s got these days come with some sort of built in imaging doohickey. So we were able to capture some shots of Carolina and her cousin Camila making sand mermaids (or would that make them “plagemaids”?) of themselves:

Mermaids of the sand

Mermaids of the sand

 

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Feet? Is this The Little Mermaid all over again??

 

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And, of course, the mermaid-princess pose

 

Stay tuned for more summer fun!

November 10, 2009. Tags: , , . Photos. Leave a comment.

First Birthday Pics

We still haven’t gotten the photos back from the photographer (yes, there was a photographer…), but I can at least show you some shots we took of Princess Carolina dressed as Princess Ariel, just before going downstairs to her party:

Ready to go! Where's the ocean?

Ready to go! Where's the ocean?

Oh my, oh me!

Am I dope, or what?

And just for good measure, here’s a recent photo taken over brunch at Parque Lage:

Daddy, Carolina and the class mascot

Daddy, Carolina and Noni, the class mascot

September 25, 2009. Tags: , . Photos. 1 comment.

Happy Birthday, Princess Carolina!

Carolina turned 3 years old on Wednesday! I should have posted this then, but only got around to putting it on Facebook… Here’s our most recent photo of Carol-as-princess. Stay tuned – her big Little Princess blast is coming up on Sunday. I’m sure in about 2 months or so, we’ll have a ton of photos to post :P

Carolina in her latest princess incarnation

Carolina in her latest princess incarnation

September 18, 2009. Tags: , . Uncategorized. 1 comment.

Visit to LA 2009 – Part 2

Here are more photos of our visit to LA back in June.

August 7, 2009. Tags: , , , . Photos. Leave a comment.

Los Angeles 2009 – Part 1

Princess Carolina made  her annual pilgrimmage to California last month. This one was pretty special. For one thing, she actually knew what California was this time (or at least, had heard of it, after incessant playing of the Sparks tune “Mickey Mouse”). She also got to make all her princess dreams come true this time: we took her to Disneyland to meet the princesses, California Adventure to meet any princesses she’d missed on the first  go-around, the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, Catalina… just about everything a little princess needs to seem refined, yet worldly. Oh yeah, and she got to hang out with the family, too.

We have so many photos, I’m just going to throw them at you and see which ones stick. This first post focuses on, well, nothing in particular. It’s the “best” 50 or so photos of the first 700 or so shots out of the about 2000 we took on the trip. I hope you get through them all. If it helps any, just think of what WE had to go through to pick them out!

July 6, 2009. Tags: , , . Photos. Leave a comment.

Carnaval 2009: Day 3

Many months have passed since the actual event, but at long last I’m posting the photos of day 3 of our Carnaval for 2009! This was the one we were waiting for, because our favorite bloco for the past few years was set to parade in the morning. It’s called the Cordão Umbilical do Boitatá (“The umbilical cord of the Boitatá”), which is a play on words from the bloco Cordão do Boitatá (“Cordão”, or “big cord”, is a traditional designation for blocos). The “umbilical cord” is a version they do especially for kids.

The Cordão Umbilical is great for us not only because they’re kid-friendly (they start out the parade with an “ala”, or contingent, of babies in strollers), but because all of our old friends go there. It’s a pretty small gathering (only a few hundred people, as opposed to the tens of thousands that show up at the real Cordão do Boitatá), so it *almost* feels like a private party. As far as G-rated Carnaval goes, it doesn’t get much better than this!

The bloco marches on up the hill to a hospital. When we get there, everyone starts to sing and play in a whisper so as not to disturb the hospital patients (it’s part of the annual ritual). Then we turn a corner and immediately start making mind-bogglingly loud noise again as if, by virtue of not facing right at them, they won’t be able to hear us.  The bloco proceeds back down the hill on a separate street to end up where we started.

We headed back home, got ourselves cleaned up, and spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool (sorry, no pictures). And that was pretty much it for our Carnaval: Dada had to spend day 4 doing a shift at the hospital, and I joined her there for an emergency ecocardiogram (long story, nothing to worry about). The rest of the week was spent visiting Dada’s cousin down in Campinas, São Paulo. Hopefully I can get around to showing you that some day… or any of the other 2500 photos we’ve taken since Carnaval.

May 23, 2009. Tags: . Photos. 2 comments.

Carnaval 2009: Day 2

On Carnaval Sunday, we decided to take a break from all the parades and costumes and head for the beach. It was a nice, hot day, and Leblon was having one of those rare days that are perfect for families with small children: small, mellow waves, and a high tide that formed mini-pools up on the sand for the kiddies to splash around. Carolina put on her Princess Ariel bikini, and off she went!

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Digging... digging... oops! I think we sprung a leak!

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Carol's favorite game: Throw all the nice shells daddy saved for me back into the sea.

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Talking to the sand crabs

Talking to the sand crabs

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Guess she didn't like what they had to say

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Dada was on call at the hospital that night. Guess that means no Carnaval fun, right? Wrong! As luck (or pure statistical odds) would have it, there was a bloco forming right outside her hospital an hour or two before her shift. It was called “Maracangalha”, probably named after the samba / bossa nova tune of the same name (“Eu vou pra Maracangalha, eu vou…“), but they seemed to be playing a mix of samba-enredo and marchinhas, probably just as a ruse to be allowed to wander around in the middle of the street drinking beer.

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Ready... aim...

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...fire!

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Carolina and friends - Pedro on the left, Bia on the right, and Helena, the butterfly in the background

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Helena with mom Lina (as a zebra), daddy as a... Winnie the Pooh gringo thing, and Carol as "Grandma Kat"

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Confetti seems to go farther the higher up you are when you throw

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What's better than cat ears? Cat AND mouse ears!

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A quick look at the zaniness... less costumes = more beer, less fun. The car over there is the mini "trio elêtrico".

 

March 23, 2009. Tags: , . Photos. 1 comment.

Carnaval 2009: Day 1

Updated: I finally have some time to give some background on these photos…

On the Saturday of Carnaval, we woke up suuuper early (for us – 7AM) so that we could make it to our favorite “bloco” (neighborhood band/parade), Céu na Terra (Heaven on Earth), up in Santa Teresa. Every year, the word spreads a little more about how great this bloco is, which plays in the more traditional “marchinha” style of songs for Carnaval, goes through one of the most scenic places in Rio, and is itself one of the most scenic parades, since it’s frequented by the more “artistic” Carnaval-goers, and the band itself occasionally even plays while riding the famous yellow cable car of Santa Teresa. About 4 years ago, the crowd started getting unbearable, so they moved their first parade to earlier in the morning, and then started an hour earlier than people were reporting in the papers – you had to know someone to really know what time they started. This year, they didn’t lie, but they chose to go at the same time as Bola Preta, the traditional bloco that more or less marks the official beginning of Carnaval. By doing so, they guanteed that at least 500,000 people would be somewhere else during the parade.

Unfortunately for us, it wasn’t enough. Getting crammed in with thousands of people on narrow streets on a hot summer morning in an even hotter costume is great when you’re drinking, whooping it up and haven’t a care in the world, but having to watch out for a princess (in this case, an Indian princess) changes everything. We got close enough to the band the see and hear them playing and sing along, and then soon regretted it. An hour or so of compulsory revelry later, we were finally able to slip out a side street and head back home.

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You sure this is a good idea, daddy?

 

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Hell yeah!

 

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I know where I want to be...

 

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...up there!

 

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Close enough...

 

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Daddy, are you supposed to step on their toes like that?

 

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Next year, I'm trying out for the band

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My fine feathered family

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Just us kickin' back with a beer on the way home (hey, try this in the land of the free!)

We headed home and went straight for the pool (sorry, no pix!). In the evening, we decided to go for something a little tamer, and went to a little samba fest for kids at an open mall called “Downtown” (far from downtown Rio, of course). A samba troupe made up of pre-teen kids was playing there, and they let all the visitors come and bang on their different drums. We met our friends Lina and Daniel there, with their daughter Helena, and we all hung out through dinner.

 

She sure likes to bang on those drums... maybe I should rename this blog

She sure likes to bang on those drums... maybe I should rename this blog

 

Helena in her Bola Preta ballerina outfit, with mom Lina

Helena in her Bola Preta ballerina outfit, with mom Lina

 

Throwing confetti in her makeshift Tinkerbell outfit (shh! Don't tell her it's not official)

Throwing confetti in her makeshift Tinkerbell outfit (shh! Don't tell her it's not official)

 

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And, as a final treat, here’s a quick video of Carolina learning to samba from the experts:

February 25, 2009. Tags: . Photos. Leave a comment.

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