Eleni's New Bed

Hello!

Hopefully by now you're all slowly waking up from your holiday food hangovers. But if you're anything like me, just when you're starting to feel human again after filling your face with everything in sight, you see something else that looks delicious and you attack it like you've been stranded in the Sahara desert for weeks. Then you end up right back at the beginning...lying on the couch, sweating, feeling like an over-stuffed pig and asking yourself, "why, Why, WHY!!??!!" 

This is followed by a very serious pep talk..."Next time you're going to remember how horrible this feels and you WILL use some self control"...which of course will inevitably fail and you will end up lying on the couch again, suffering and hating yourself for having absolutely no concept of self control.

God I love the holidays!!!

Seriously though, Christmas was really good this year. It was the first Christmas I've had in Molyvos where I didn't feel so homesick that I was just waiting for all of it to be over. I still felt a little homesick of course but it was much easier to deal with this year, thanks to Eleni. Being only 4 months old, obviously none of it made any sense to her at all and it was all just like any other day but I still had so much fun telling her that Santa was coming and singing Christmas songs to her. Watching her open presents was really cute too. Her hand coordination has gotten really good over the last month so when we showed her how to tear the wrapping paper off of presents....I'm pretty sure if she could talk she would say that that was the funnest thing she's ever done in her entire life! What was in the paper, she couldn't have cared less about, but ripping up the paper was just so awesome and then trying to put the paper in her mouth...and even succeeding sometimes when Mommy and Baba weren't paying attention...yeah I would say she's already counting down the days til next Christmas.

And we get to do it all over again tomorrow and January 1st because it's now officially Greek Christmas YAY!! 

Christmas and New Years as we know it is reversed in Greece...sort of. Christmas here is celebrated more like New Years and New Years is like our Christmas. Are you confused yet? So on  December 24th and 25th they still get together with family and friends and have a big feast but you don't give out presents. Some people do but Antonis tells me that that's only something that's started happening in recent generations because of...well...us. Westernization basically. Anyway, the traditional December 24th and 25th involves eating a lot of food and going out and drinking way to much with your friends. December 31st is when Saint Vasilis (Greek Santa Claus) visits and leaves presents for everyone, and January 1st is like our Christmas morning. You wake up, open presents and start eating. And you eat and eat and eat until...well we've already talked about that.

So tomorrow is New Years Eve and it's also kind of like Christmas Eve over here. For Antonis and I, we'll be celebrating like it's New Years Eve...hopefully. That's the plan anyway, I'll let you know what happens because we don't have any solid plans yet. All I know is Eleni will be having her first sleep over with Yiayia and Papous. And yes, Mommy is freaking out a little. It won't be a full over-night though, we'll be picking her up when we come home from whatever it is we end up doing but anyway...getting back to my point. Tomorrow we'll do the usual New Years Eve stuff and on January 1st we'll go to his parent's house for a big holiday lunch and we're going to eat way too much while Eleni rips up more wrapping paper and ignores the presents inside of it. It should be fun! 

It's getting a bit late here so I'll move on to talking about what I had originally planned. I always do that! I have a basic idea of something I want to tell you about and then suddenly I find myself writing a freaking novel about everything else other than the thing I wanted to talk about originally!! I don't know how that happens but anyway.....

So, the thing I wanted to tell you about...or actually I just want to show it to you...is Eleni's new bed!!

Finally she's moving out of her bassinet and into her "big girl bed." Technically it's not a big girl bed since it's a crib but she gets so excited when we call it her "big girl bed" so that's what it is now. Anyway, I want to give a massive thank you to my parents and my Aunt Joan for sending us the money to buy it. We are sooooo thankful and so is Eleni because she absolutely LOVES her new bed. We also had enough left over to buy a new "big girl car seat" which I don't have a picture of but I promise I'll get one. So, thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU!!! We love you, you're the best!!

So here's the crib we picked out...

 As you can see, it's in our bedroom. I still feel like she's too small to be in her own room....oh wait, we don't even have a bedroom for her!! How could I forget?! Or actually we have a room for her...if you remember, it was the room I was desperately trying to fix up for her while I was pregnant...but it was never finished and is still an ugly storage room. Right! That's why we're all sleeping like sardines in a tin can!

Ok, I'm joking...but only a little bit.

I do actually think she's still too young to be in her own bedroom

But I'm also SUPER ANNOYED that the room that I had planned to have ready for her at least 1 month before she was due, is still a huge mess and nowhere near looking like a baby's bedroom. 

In fact, we're still waiting for the carpenter to build the change table we ordered in August! 

But anyway, I'm not going to talk about that anymore because I'm just going to get pissed off...and I ran out of wine so...moving on

Oh, before I move on...please excuse my messy bedroom! 

I had to hang the laundry up inside because it was too windy outside again...and I still can't face my neighbour since the last windstorm when my nickers ended up in her orange tree so this is my solution

The very cute mobile my parents brought over for Eleni. Finally we can use it! And Eleni already loves it!

Cuuuute! And it also has a drawer on the bottom which is nice. We need all the extra storage we can get!

And this is what Eleni looks like as of about 30 seconds ago. I know, I know, why isn't she sleeping in the new crib? She loves the crib...she loves waking up in it, sitting in it, playing in it while I brush my teeth or get dressed or whatever...but she doesn't love being put down in it until she's so totally asleep the she doesn't notice she's being put into bed. It's not the crib's fault, she's always been like this. So she falls asleep in the relax chair and then when she's totally asleep, I carry her into bed. 

I know. I'm spoiling her. I need to fix this sooner rather than later. 

Meh, it'll be a new year's resolution I guess.

Here's a picture of our tree lit up. 

The other pictures where during the day and a Christmas tree just isn't in all it's glory until it's dark and the Christmas lights are on

And this is a really sweet ornament my Mom sent over. It's a baby's first Christmas ornament. 

It says "Love at first sight!"

So true!

Ok I better stop rambling on now and get some sleep so I can actually bring in the new year tomorrow night with my eyes open.

Happy New Year everybody!! 

I wish you all the absolute best of the best in 2013!

Talk to you next year!