We're Crawling!!!

Just when I thought we were settling in nicely to a new routine, Eleni decided to pick up a new sport:

EXTREME CRAWLING!

I'm sure you're all familiar with regular crawling, but extreme crawling takes things to a whole other level! It's fast, it's reckless, and it takes you places you don't belong!

For the last few weeks Eleni's been testing the crawling waters....getting into position, trying a step here and there, falling down here and there. Oddly enough she mastered crawling backwards right away but going forward seemed to pose a bit of a challenge for her. But Thursday morning, as I was watching from the kitchen, she took one step...then she took a second step...then a third.....then she turned around to look at me, shrieked with laughter and TOOK OFF at hyper speed toward the tv stand with all it's hanging wires and interesting boxes with flashing lights (the modem, and various other internet, tv and telephone boxes and connections and such...whatever that stuff is called...in my new mommy language this stuff is just called DANGER!) 

So once again Eleni has managed to teach me how naive I am about parenthood. I've been encouraging her to crawl, thinking that she'd just toddle around a little, quietly and thoughtfully observing her environment from a new perspective.....What a fool!!! 

She's so fast you can't even take your eyes off of her for a second or she'll be in a whole other room of the house doing something completely destructive like emptying bookshelves, ripping electrical chords out of the wall, pushing over anything that's in a standing position. I think I even caught her in the beginning stages of building a small fire this morning. Seriously, anything that she should not do, or should not touch....she's doing it and/or touching it. And not in a nice or safe way either, she's literally trying to break everything in the house into a million tiny pieces. And then she laughs about it. 

Don't be fooled by this sweet little face. She's a danger to herself and society. And she's on the loose!

I've had 15 heart attacks in the last 4 days. I'm very proud of her, but holy man I'm a nervous wreck! The problem is that she started crawling about a week before we'd planned to baby proof the whole house. Figures! So now I'm running behind her 24/7 and baby proofing as I go, which, let me tell you, this is so NOT the way to do it! Looking back, I probably should have baby proofed everything around this time last year. But of course I didn't and once again I'm learning the hard way. C'est la vie! This week is Carnivale so Antonis has been really busy at the restaurant...this means I have one more day of following Eleni around with a safety net and fire extinguisher, and then Antonis will be able to help me get this place into Fort Knox-like security. By Tuesday I should be able to breathe again....

So I mentioned that it's Carnivale over here right now. In Greek it's actually called Apokries, which literally means "good bye to meat", because following Apokries we have Lent, which is supposed to be a time of fasting and sacrifice. I should probably explain this a little better, but I'll keep it short and to the point:

Basically, when Lent begins you turn into a vegetarian until Easter, and after that you can return to your heathen ways. Before Lent, this 3 weeks of Apokries, you're supposed to eat and drink and act like an ass as much as possible because for the next 40 days (Lent) you're gonna have to act like a saint, which is really hard to do so theoretically, if you let yourself go for Apokries, you should be able to handle Lent. Does that make sense? So we have a 3 week free pass to do whatever we want (Apokries/Carnivale)....with costumes involved by the way....then there's 40 days where you can't do a damn thing you want (Lent), and then Easter arrives and life goes back to normal.

So that's just a very short, non-religious description of what this holiday is all about. But anyway, there's people wandering around in costumes right now because it's Apokries.....Eleni was a strawberry....

She absolutely LOVES her little tutu with the strawberries on it! She kept picking it up to show everyone while saying "Da!" "Da!" It was so cute!

Yiayia and Papous with our froulitsa (little strawberry)

So sweet!

Tomorrow is Kathara Deftera which means Clean Monday, so it's the beginning of Lent but there's still some Carnival stuff happening around so Eleni and I are going to check that out with Maria and Michaela. I'll bring the camera along and tell you what happens because I've never actually gotten involved in the family stuff around here for Apokries...

If it's warm enough maybe Eleni will wear her strawberry costume again but we'll see what the weather's like. At least I got some pictures of her in it today just in case it rains tomorrow.....

So other than the crawling and the holiday, Papous is much better! Again! He went to Athens to have his pacemaker adjusted, again, and now he's back to his old self. He says he has some pain in his legs though and can't walk as well as he used to but seriously...he's 93! It's not surprising he has a bit of pain here and there. I'm 32 and I complain about my aches and pains. He's almost 3 times my age!

I also have a pretty big announcement to make but I think I'm going to save that for my next post............

Good night!