Oh My God...

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted anything. Things have been BUSY over here!

Here's what's new:

Tourist season has begun! We still don't have a lot of people who wear socks and sandals tourists yet but they're slowly arriving, so we've been madly trying to get the restaurant looking fresh and new. As of today, absolutely every surface in the place as been scrubbed, sanitized, polished, painted, you name it, it's all been done.

I also started a new job this week. It's just for a few weeks but it's SO much fun and exactly what I would like to be doing over here. I'm teaching English to 2 amazing little girls for 3 hours a day, everyday. They're 4 and 8, and to be quite honest I think I'm learning more than they are. Don't get me wrong, I think I'm a pretty great teacher but these girls have really given me some perspective as for what I'm in for in the next few years. Here's a conversation I had with the little one today:

Me: Mika, can you count to 10 for me?
Mika: Yep. 1, 2, 3, 4....I'm hungry!
Me: Ok sweetie, we can call your mom for a snack but can you just count to 10 for me first please?
Mika: No, I want to practice my letters instead
Me: Great! We're going to practice your letters as soon as you finish counting to 10. Can we try again?
Mika: Fine! 1, 2...I have to pee
Me: (*sigh*) Ok, go pee but hurry back
Mika: No, I don't have to pee but I'm huuuuungry!
Me: Lets just count to 10 and then you can take a break and have a snack. I'll count with you ok? Are you ready? 1.....
Mika: I already know my numbers Tara, you don't have to make me count. Listen! 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, eleventeen, fiveteen, eight teen, nineteen, twenty, a hundred. See, I can count to a hundred so can I practice my letters now?
Me: Yeah we can do your letters now
Mika: But I don't waaaaant to, can I take a break now?
Me: Mika, we've been in class for 20 minutes...
Mika: Wow that's a lot! I'm going to get some cheese...

So that's my new job! It takes a lot a patience but it's so much fun, we laugh almost the whole time and honestly, there really isn't anything cuter than a 4 year old saying "eleventeen" with so much confidence. Oh and today I wrote the numbers from 1 - 20 for her,  but she didn't like the way I wrote my 1's so she drew a bunch of number 1's on a piece of paper for me and told me to go home and practice. Hilarious!

On top of all of this we're planning Eleni's baptism as well. Well I'm not actually doing any of the planning because I don't have the slightest idea about these kind of things, but it's happening around me and I'm getting filled in as we go. As far as I know right now it will be on the 8th or 9th of May, Olympia and Yorgos are off to Mytilini tomorrow to buy all the baptism-type stuff we will need and Olympia gave us her guest list today.....this is just HER guest list....do you want to guess how many people are on it???? Well you can't really because we're not even really sure but the number of actual names on the list is over 100, BUT most of these names are representing an entire family! So while an invitation is being sent out to this one name on the list, it actually counts for like 2 - 5 or more people. Antonis' guess is that her list is actually about 250 - 300 people.....yeah. Now you know why I titled this one Oh My God.

Oh My God I'm about to have My Big Fat Greek Baptism........

Stay tuned for Oh My God part 2...

So that's about it really. Eleni is cuter and cuter everyday. She's trying really hard to stand up without holding onto anything so my little 8 month old is very nearly walking! Still no teeth, but she's almost walking! And she said Papou today, so that made Yorgos very happy. Her crawling skills are amazing, she's even going upstairs now. She hasn't tried going down yet but she's a master at going up. Lately she's been a dancing machine and she's also learned how to wave.....the waving has been incorporated into some of the dance moves which I think is genius. I might try that one out myself actually.

That's all for now! I'll try not to leave so much time between now and the next post but we'll see how busy things get. I'll definitely have something for you about the baptism but I'll try to write again before that.

For now here are a few photos, again taken by our very good friend Torsten. I have some others that I want to share with you but they haven't uploaded properly to my computer so I have to try again...more technology issues. What else is new?? Anyway, here are some beautiful photos by Torsten from Monday:

I love this one. I can't even make a joke about it, it's too beautiful

Having a cuddle after her afternoon bottle

Talking to Theos Lefteris

My handsome hubby looking tired but happy

And my favourite! Shoulder rides are her favourite because she loves to pull hair, as you can see

So that's us lately. Hope you're all well and we'll talk to you soon!!

Mama!

The funniest thing just happened...

So today I planned to take a bunch of pictures of Eleni so I could update the blog and have something for you to look at....since I know you guys don't come here for the quality literature...anyway, but last night was a really rough night for our little LenLen and she ended up sleeping most of today because of it (teething again, poor muffin...lets hope those teeth finally pop through this time!). So anyway, I couldn't take any pictures of her because she was sleeping....unless I managed to whip out my camera during the poop disaster this morning but that wouldn't be very nice for any of us. So I figured that today would be a good day to finally show you the change table we had built for Eleni (to go in her room which still isn't a bedroom at all...I'm just going to take a deep breath now and let that issue go for today). You remember the change table we ordered back in the beginning of August just before she was born? Hang on...I need to take another deep breath....it's not that big of a deal that it took 7 MONTHS TO BUILD THIS THING!!! Oh right, I was going to take a deep breath........I'll get back to the change table story once I calm down about it. It kind of ties into the poop disaster story...

Getting to the point finally, I couldn't take any pictures of Eleni today so instead I took a few pictures of the new change table, then when I went to upload the 3 pictures of the change table it says I have 50-something photos on my memory card. Huh? Where the heck did I get 50 more pictures from? It turns out Antonis and Eleni were playing with the camera yesterday morning while they let me sleep in and didn't tell me about it, so I just spent the last 10 minutes laughing my butt off at my goofy little family that take secret pictures during playtime. They're just too cute!

Now, before I get into the change table/poop incident story and before I upload a ton of pictures, something else happened today that was SO awesome......

Eleni's saying Mama!!!!!!!!!!

Yayyyyyyy! I could have done a back flip when she said it! So now she says Mama and Baba (and sometimes Dada or Dad but mostly she chooses the Greek version for him). I'm so proud of her! A few times though when she was a bit excited she got a little confused and mixed the 2 together...and that came out as Bum. Anyway, she's still totally amazing even if she calls us Bum sometimes.... 

So, where to start? I'll give you the pictures of the change table first and tell you about that...

7 months later...maybe it's 7 1/2 but who's counting??..and we finally have a place to change Eleni's diaper other than the floor, our bed or the couch

These are those cute stickers you can get for your walls but I decided to put them on here so Eleni could have something to distract her from wiggling around to look at. My Mom picked up a bunch of them for the walls in her room but I had a bunch left over, and they fit perfectly here if I do say so myself!

Tons of storage space!! Yay! Finally we have somewhere to store all of her things

So that's the change table we've been waiting for. But there's just one problem: 

WE CAN'T CHANGE HER DIAPER ON IT!

Since Eleni picked up the sport of extreme crawling, diaper changing has become an absolute nightmare! The minute you lay her down on her back, she's flipping around onto her front and she takes off!! Obviously that means it's totally impossible to change her here because she's just trying to crawl off of it the whole time, which is terrifying! So basically we had maybe 2 weeks of use out of this thing........awesome.

But I do appreciate that we can fit all of her stuff in here finally, instead of keeping it piled up all over the house like it used to be. I guess I'll just focus on that so I don't freak out about how useful it WOULD have been had we gotten it on time.....but that's Greece for ya. Siga siga (slowly slowly), lets drink another coffee and smoke 10 more cigarettes, then we'll talk about getting to it tomorrow....

Now the poop disaster.....you can probably guess by now where I'm about to go with this. Don't worry, I'll hold back on the graphic details. 

This morning after breakfast it was evident that it was time for a diaper change. Keep in mind that we're now eating solids. Also keep in mind (without getting too graphic) that that doesn't necessarily mean that what you get in the end is solid. In fact it almost never is. What it DOES mean is there's just a heck of a lot of it now! And since we can't change her on the change table because we're worried she's going to try to sky dive off of it, we put her down on the floor on her changing pillow. So here's what happened today, although this story is pretty similar to what's happened every single morning for the last 2 weeks...I get her pajamas off, that's all fine....I open her diaper, that's fine too....but as soon as I grab the wipes to start cleaning her up, she flips around to her stomach and starts crawling away. And did I mention how fast she is?? And sometimes she sits down and then she gets up again and crawls some more... Now you try to catch a child covered in poop without getting yourself and everything else covered in it as well! It's not an easy task, let me tell you! So I finally catch her and I put her back down to wash her. But she's kicking and trying to roll around, and that's when I realize that not all of the poop has stayed inside the diaper. In fact I'd say about 50% of it has found it's way north of the waistband (besides what is everywhere else by this time). Fantastic! So I yell for Antonis:

Me: BABY!!!!!

Antonis: What happened?!

Me: Get in here quick!!

Me: HURRY!!!!

Antonis: Is she ok? What happened? Is she hurt? 

Me: No but there's poop EVERYWHERE! It's on her clothes, it's on the changing pillow, it's on her foot, there's some in her arm pit don't ask me how that got there and OH MY GOD IT'S ON MY HAND!!! IT'S ON MY HAAAAND!!!! I need you to hold her down so she doesn't get it on the last few things in the house that are still clean!!!

Antonis: Oh fuck.

Me: I think 'shit' would be the more appropriate curse word to use right now....

Eleni is going to kill me when she reads this one day......

Anyway, so we finally managed to clean her up, put on a new diaper and clean clothes but it was a team effort and an extremely stressful 15 minutes. Yes, it seriously took 15 minutes. And that's just how long it took to deal with her! That does not include the time it took to clean everything else that was hit in the process!

Seriously, she's going to disown me after she reads this one.....no actually, I'm going to have to remember to delete this one so she doesn't know it ever existed so lets keep that last story between us.... 

Ok so lets end today's post on a much nicer note than poop. Here are all the pictures from the secret photo shoot Eleni and Baba had yesterday morning while I was snoring in the next room, completely oblivious to the super fun time they were having: