Eleni's 3rd Birthday Party

One month ago today our little munchkin turned 3!!

Here are the photos from her party...that was also 1 month ago....I'm not going to comment about these being a month late because honestly, I'm impressed with myself for getting them up before Thanksgiving...

 Eleni and Apostolis with their noise makers,

not that they needed them,

they're very good at making a lot of noise without them...

 Our little friend Barbara (pronounced var-VAR-a in Greek)

 A new friend on the left, with her mommy Sofia 

Danai on the right, Eleni's very good friend who had her 3rd birthday Friday 

and is having her big birthday bash today....Eleni is WAY excited...

 Apostolis finding ways to make noise makers even noiser

Well done bud!

I see a future career path emerging...

 Cousin Maria in back

Elenaki with Yorgia

 Olympia, 

by some miracle, 

sleeping peacefully through all the noise and chaos

 Having fun

 Michaela and her red balloon

 Theia Eleni (Aunt Eleni) with Yorgia

...Olympia is still snoozing

 Pig tails

 Aaaaand our usual battle...

"Eleni, can you take a nice picture with mommy? Look at Baba and smile!"

 Nope.

So then I try to make her laugh....

 And as usual, I remind myself that Eleni dances to the beat of her own drum

and I give up the fight

Who needs boring old posed photos anyway?!

Blowing out her candles to the Greek version of Happy Birthday

 Oh look! Olympia decided to join us finally!

She must have smelled chocolate cake...

that always wakes me up too

Yorgia and Olympia with Maria

We light the candles again and sing Happy Birthday in English

What a lucky girl, getting to blow out the candles twice every year...

that's TWO wishes every year!

And now, we're off to Danai's birthday party!

Gaga and Papa, get ready for a high speed, sugar filled chat on Skype later....it should be interesting!

First Day of School

As usual....it's been a while!

We're all sick over here so instead of working on Saturday night like I usually do, I'm home with the girls watching movies and eating chicken soup.....life's tough! 

And while a 14 hour marathon of cartoons is super fun, I thought I'd take a little break from that and update the blog

The main thing I wanted to add today was photos of Eleni's birthday party....which 

was only about a month ago....but then I realized that they're all on Antonis' phone, which is of course with Antonis in the restaurant. So I guess the next blog will be about Eleni's 3rd birthday...and probably Christmas...but lets hope I find some free time before that

Things have been BUSY over here! 

Eleni had her first day of preschool on Tuesday!  

The night before I tried to talk to her a bit about school:

ME: Eleni, are you excited about school tomorrow?

E: No

ME: Why?

E: I don't know

ME: are you a little nervous? Because that's ok if you are, I was always nervous on my first day of sc...

E: (interrupts me) Actually mom, I don't really care. Ask me tomorrow.

Well then.

I will!

And I did. But this time she was excited, although you can't tell by the photos...  

"Eleni, you know you smile if you want to"

  

"Is that your usual smile?"

"Seriously kiddo, give me my mommy moment and smile nice for the camera!"

"Wait mom, I gotta check something"

"K, I'm ready now!"

close enough....

Good morning kisses for Olympia before school, 

which was insanely cute but of course 

wiggly

Going to school!

Checking out her classroom

Rania, her teacher, showing her around

Joining the other kids outside....here it goes...

Aaaaaand no problem!

Instant friends!

Olympia made friends too

Maria, another teacher

Baba and Yorgia

Another reason things are so busy around here:

The twins are both crawling! 

The day after my last post, Yorgia started crawling. 2 weeks ago Olympia decided to join her....and now she's trying to race her all around the house.

Seriously.

She sees Yorgia crawling toward the kitchen, she giggles, and takes off like a bullet! It's hilarious!

"Olympia, can I please get a picture of you WITHOUT you trying to grab the camera?"

And of course you can see the 2 little chicklet teeth on the bottom, there's also a third just starting to come through on the top

Playtime!

"Olympia, seriously, it's mommy's camera"

"OH! Mommy! I didn't see you there!"

Reading time with Eleni and Yorgia

"HI!"

Reading time duck faces

"Olympia! It's MY camera!"

"Whatcha doin' mom? Oh, you were trying to take a nice picture of both of us? How about an extreme close up of just me?"

So that's what's happening here! We're adjusting to a new routine since we have to get out of the  house early in the morning for school. I'm beyond stressed out about this crawling, since they ALWAYS seem to take off in different directions and ALWAYS towards something they shouldn't go to. Add that to all the usual daily things: cooking for everyone, feeding everyone, cleaning up after everyone 5000 times, changing 10,000 diapers dealing with the 1000 or so refugees that have arrived in Molyvos every single day...oh yeah, there's that too but lets not talk about that today. I'm running from 6am until 8 or 9pm every night! 

But not right now. Right now, I'm going to get back to the cartoon marathon and sniffly, sneezy snuggles