A Day in the Life: Baby Food, Bubbles, Baptisms and a Big Night Out

I realize I put a lot of pictures on here of Eleni eating. Why do I do this? Because I love watching her eat! For one I know I'm giving her healthy foods that will keep her healthy and make her grow, so when she's really enjoying the food I make for her I just get a warm fuzzy feeling all over. But also....she's just so funny! She gets it everywhere! And she doesn't care. I'm a bit envious of that actually....imagine sitting down to eat and just enjoying your food so much that you rub it all over your face and in your hair, maybe you throw a little around, and to have no one judge you or think it's weird in any way? How awesome that would be!

I promise if you invite me over for dinner I will absolutely follow protocol and use my manners at all times.

Eleni however....not gonna happen. You're just going to have to find a way to enjoy the show, like I do.

I made her tortellini with

SUPER VEGGIE SAUCE

The tortellini was store bought and white, which I don't normally like to give her but once in a while we can break the rules a bit.

The sauce is homemade though and really easy, I just sauteed a tomato, bit of onion,

garlic, spinach, carrot and some peas until everything was really soft, added some basil and oregano, a little bit of feta cheese, and then whizzed the whole thing up with a hand blender. Done!

That's my Super Veggie Sauce.

I never use tomato sauce from a jar anymore. Eleni's not really a picky eater but there are a few vegetables that are not really her favourite so if I can hide them in something, like a sauce, she'll eat them.

The hidden veggie here was spinach. You probably guessed that though.

I like to make it really thick, I just use a bit olive oil for sauteing. Sometimes I'll add some water if it's come out too thick and chunky but usually I spoon feed her the left over sauce anyway so it's better if it has some texture....she's not a big fan of runny 'baby' food since she's a big girl now.

You can use whatever vegetables you want, it really doesn't matter. Eleni's eaten every version of Super Veggie Sauce I've ever put in front of her, with or without the cheese, and she's always happy.

She also has some apple and banana juice in her sippy cup (homemade again, she rarely gets store bought juice), normally if I give her the juice I have to wait until the end of the meal or else she won't bother with eating, she just wants the juice. Not when there's pasta on the menu though!

Last Saturday we went for a walk in the morning. We had some gifts to buy (2 weddings, a baptism and a birthday...I think we're going to have to drop some of our friends, they're getting too expensive). We also bought some bubbles for Eleni so we stopped to have a break and blow some bubbles.

She thought they were magical

So here are some pictures from the wedding/baptism from last Saturday.

Our friends Tsaki and Kasia were married and their daughter Danae was baptized at the same time.

We were too late to see the wedding unfortunately...I've been dying to get some video of the old ladies whipping rice at the married couple, it's hysterical. They're hysterical. It's painful, trust me I've been there, but so funny to watch them wind up like pro baseball players and double over laughing when they smoke the poor couple. When Antonis and I were married it took me 2 days to get all the rice out of my hair and we didn't even have a church wedding. They get even more into it when it's a church wedding.

Anyway. Next time.

We made it for the whole baptism though, so this is little Danae with her beautiful mommy Kasia

Stavros is her Godfather.

He's so serious right now. A rare moment for our Stavro.

A little video of the baptism.

Danae started to cry and it made me want to cry so I decided to go on a little adventure.

I found a secret door.

Behind that secret door was a secret staircase.

I went up the secret staircase and what did I find?

A secret balcony!

There was a beautiful after party arranged at Panselianos Hotel. We were working that night though so we missed the dinner and dancing unfortunately.

Actually what's even more unfortunate is that we had a group of 40 Turkish people booked to come into the taverna that night at 8:30.

They arrived at 9:30.

We didn't have live Greek music.

They were told by the travel agent that we would have live Greek music even though we told the travel agent we couldn't book musicians because there were none available that night.

The travel agent told us the group was fine with that.

But they were not.

They were never even given that message.

So they left.

We had food ready for 40 people but because the travel agent told everyone what they wanted to hear about the live music situation, all 40 people got back on the bus and left.

It was devastating.

To the travel agent: Katerina Whoeveryouare in Petra....bad karma is coming your way.

Anyway, since we didn't have 40 Turkish people to feed and clean up after, we were out of the restaurant early enough to catch the tail end of the wedding reception...the very tail end of it. Actually we were there in time to get the message that everyone was ready to go into Molyvos for a drink.

So off we went to Manta Bar

Joseph and Joseph

Lefteris and Joseph

(sorry some of these are dark and/or blurry...I over indulged in the wine that night and couldn't figure out how to use my camera like a normal person)