A Lovely Visit....

Hello!

I hope everyone's doing great! We're all good over here. Nothing exciting is happening though so I'll warn you right now, this is yet another blog devoted completely to bragging about baby. So if you're hoping for an update about Molyvos, this is all you're gonna get.....it's been raining. Ok it hasn't been raining constantly, we've had some nice days...today was gorgeous...but most of my time lately has been spent in the house, trying to stay dry and constantly bringing the laundry inside from the rain, then back out again when it stops, and then inside again, and back out again and on and on and on. I've been trying to dry the same load of laundry for 3 days! At this point the dirty pile is almost taller than me since I can't wash anything else until I have a place to hang it up to dry. I'm having nightmares that the giant pile of laundry is going to fall on me and I'll be crushed and suffocated under wet, stinky towels and baby onesies covered in various kinds of bodily fluids.

This is stupid. I'm talking about laundry. I seriously need to get out more.

Ok, so back to our usual talking about Eleni. Here's the update on her:

• We're still waiting for her little teeth to pop through...we're almost there! I've been saying that for what seems like forever now but I think now, they really are almost here. At least I hope so anyway because this whole tooth growing business has not been easy for anyone. 

• She's rolling around like crazy! From back to front and front to back and then sometimes 3 or 4 rolls in a row to the point where she stops and she's a little bit dizzy and confused about how she got so far away from where she was before which is always funny.

• She's mostly sleeping through the night now...except for those nights when her teeth are bothering her but for the most part she goes to bed around 8:30 or 9:00pm and sleeps until 6:30 or 7:00am. I know 6:30am doesn't sound that appealing but trust me, when you've gotten used to waking up every 2 or 3 hours all night long for 5 months straight...waking up just once at 6:30am is no big deal.

• She's sitting up on her own now! She's still a little unbalanced so you have to be ready for the face plant into the floor at any moment but she can sit in one place without having to be held and she can move left and right to grab toys without falling. It's just when she wants to get something that's a little bit of a far reach in front of her when she topples over...she toppled pretty hard today and both of us cried. She's fine of course. I'm still a little shaken up....

• So since she's sitting up so well and has gotten to be a pro at rolling around....she's trying to crawl! I can't even believe it, my baby is almost crawling. She can't do it yet but she's trying so it won't be long from now. Especially because when she really wants to do something, she gets so pissed off that she just keeps at it until she gets it. She yells and complains the whole time but she won't give up. Determined little thing! I wonder where she gets that from....

• We're eating solid food! Again, I can't even believe it! My baby is eating big people food! It hasn't been an easy transition though. She's hated everything she's tried but after 3 or 4 more times of trying the same thing she becomes more willing to open her mouth for the airplane/rocket ship/race car/motorbike/various animals spoon. Imagination and sound effects are necessary though. I guess it's just the new textures and eating from a spoon that's probably a bit weird for her right now but she's slowly getting used to it and hopefully we're getting close to that day where she just can't wait for the next spoonful of mushy veggies. So far she's had carrots, apples, banana and rice cereal. Tomorrow she's going to try pears so we'll see how that goes. We also have a lot of cauliflower in our garden right now so I'll probably give her a bit of that next week. I'm making all my own baby food because it's so much healthier but it's also really easy and pretty inexpensive. Except the rice cereal of course. Unfortunately we don't have a lot of choice for healthy baby cereals over here, almost everything is full of sugar which I really don't like. But luckily I've at least found the rice cereal which doesn't have any taste but it's good for her at least and filling. Hopefully I can find a few more brands that are healthy also, so we can switch things up every now and then.

• And last but not least....we have a little impressionist on our hands. Any strange sound you can make with your mouth, she'll find a way to copy it. She'll stare at your mouth to see what all the different parts are doing and then she tries it out for herself. Spitting is her favourite, you know the one where you stick your tongue out and blow? I think it's called a raspberry? Anyway, she's spitting all over the place and thinks it's hilarious. "Eleni do you want some milk?" "Pfffflllrrrbp hahahaha!" "Eleni can I have a kiss?" "Pppplllllip hahahaha!" So far I'm letting it go because it's cute but I'm sure I'll regret this decision later. She also makes a kissing sound but she puts her tongue between her lips and smacks them together. It makes the same sound as a kiss so she's pretty proud of that one. She growls like a bear, makes car sounds, clicking, you name it she does it. Tonight I got the hiccups...she stared at me with her eyebrows all scrunched up for a few seconds then she got a big smile across her face, made a perfect hiccupping sound and then fell over laughing. It was so funny I had to call Antonis at work and tell him about it. She's too cute!

I think that's it? It seems like in the last couple of weeks she's learned so many new things so if I'm forgetting something don't worry, I'll fill you in later.

Last weekend we had a really nice visit with our friend Torsten. Antonis hadn't opened the restaurant up yet and it had been a month since we'd seen him so after the olive trees were picked and Antonis and Eleni were over their disgusting runny noses...we were finally able to invite Torsten over for coffee and muffins. Eleni's a huge fan! He speaks Swedish to her and she just stares at him as if she's in a trace. It's so adorable! If you saw my blog post from a few days ago I posted a link to his blog where he's put up an amazing picture of Eleni from that day. But being the lovely friend he is, he emailed me 6 others that are equally stunning. I asked him if he would mind if I put them up on my blog and he of course said he'd be happy to share them. So with a very big thank you to Torsten, here are the photos he took of Eleni last Saturday:

Making her kissing sound

So thank you very much again to my favourite Viking and his amazing photography skills!

Ok, so I'm pooped. Last night was another teething night so I'm running on about 2 1/2 hours of sleep. I'm going to roll out my yoga mat, try to do it bit of exercise and hope that when Antonis comes home he finds me sound asleep in bed and not snoring and drooling on my yoga mat in the middle of the livingroom floor.

Wish me luck!