Baby Jeggings

For those of you who don't know, Jeggings are a cross between leggings and jeans. I've been a firm believer that there should be a law against wearing them for no other reason than I think they're ugly and stupid. If you want to wear jeans, wear jeans. If you want to wear leggings, wear leggings. But when you put them both together, you might as well give up on the day...unless you were going for the 'cafeteria lady from 1984' look. Remember stirrup pants? I don't know why but I associate jeggings with stirrup pants. I suspect I'm repressing some sort of traumatic memory of a stirrup jegging but I'm not sure.  

I'll apologize now because I know I've offended most of you. But don't feel too bad because right now I'm wearing a hoody that could fit a walrus and my pajama bottoms refuse to cover my butt crack. So clearly I'm no fashionista. 

But today I realized that maybe I shouldn't be so harsh on jeggings. In fact...dear jeggings...you have become one of the single most adorable pieces of leg-wear I have ever seen.

Allow me to introduce

THE BABY JEGGING

"Look at me in my first pair of jeans..."

"Oh but wait a minute...."

"bet you can't do THIS in your jeans!"

"And I bet you don't look this good in your leggings" 

'Nuf said!

The Show Must Go On

Hello! Finally!

I decided the $2.50/month was worth it to keep up the blog. There were probably other ways to get around this but I have too little time in the day to figure any of that out, so I'll do this for a month and see how it goes.

So what's new?

It's been a busy couple of weeks!

I'll try to get through this quick because Eleni's probably going to wake up soon and if the last week or so is any indication as to what's about happen next......she'll be screaming her head off.

Colic. Do you know what colic is? Apparently no one really does. In a nutshell: your baby screams bloody murder for forever (not literally forever...depends on the baby but for us it tends to be 3-4 hours...which is FOREVER!). You think there's something seriously wrong with her but there isn't, until finally she'll stop and why she stopped is just as much of a mystery as why she started in the first place. 

It's a delight.

Oh, and mommy usually starts crying somewhere around the 2 1/2 hour mark which really doesn't seem to help the situation. But hey, you gotta try everything.

Other than the colic, she also got her first vaccine on Monday. For that...she laughed. My child may be slightly confused about how to express emotion. Good thing mommy has a psychology degree...too bad we can't start working on that now and figure out this whole colic situation. Meh, c'est la vie!

Around the house we're setting ourselves up for a winter of paying less bills (hopefully). We just had a wood stove put in. 

The Pros for the wood stove: cheaper heat for the winter, it's cozy and snuggly and lovely, there's a separate compartment that we can cook in so that means pizzas that will blow your mind, and it smells like Grandma and Papa's house.

The Cons for the wood stove: it doesn't work properly. 

I'm not sure what happened but somewhere in the installation process something went wrong so now when we light a fire, smoke pours out of every little nook and cranny it can find.....even though there shouldn't be any nooks or cranny's but somehow there is and for some reason the guy who installed it was really annoyed when I said that. Whatever dude. Fix my damn stove. I want pizza.

So hopefully that gets sorted out soon because it's actually starting to get a little chilly at night. 

Yes, it does get chilly in Greece.

At least it does where we live.

We're also getting a new solar panel for our hot water tank.This wasn't actually a decision we made. Last week Antonis and Eleni were watching tv, I was washing the dishes when all of a sudden we heard a massive  CRACK! and then all this water was gushing out of somewhere....(I thought my water broke again OH NO SHE DIDN'T! I did. I went there. And for that I apologize.) Anyway, it turns out our old solar panel, that never worked properly but our landlord refused to replace, just spontaneously exploded. Or something like that. We didn't actually see what happened but I think Antonis must have been thinking about our old crappy solar panel during his daily prayer session....and he was answered. I don't pray...I'm not particularly religious...but this guy's either on to something or he's just a lucky bastard because somehow stuff like that always seems to happen around here. Anyway, a new solar panel is on the way and we will be having luxuriously long, hot showers at a fraction of the cost. And feeling good about our environmental footprint as well!

And finally, we're growing a vegetable garden! A friend of ours has some land that wasn't being used so after a few beers and a lot of stupid ideas as to what to do with it, we all agreed that we should try out our green thumbs and make a garden. If everything goes according to plan it should support 3 households and the restaurant. 

As soon as the garden starts to look green and gorgeous I'll take some pictures...right now it's just a dirt patch. Also, when the wood stove is fixed I'll show you what it looks like too. Do you care about the solar panel? Should I take a photo of that too? They're not that interesting but if I find some spare time I'll do it....I'll have to fight off a gang of wild street cats to get to it so if I do put up a pic of the solar panel, you'll know it's because I like you a whole lot. 

Eleni's waking up so I have to run but here are some pictures of Eleni's bath time. She LOVES bath time!

The strategically placed warm cloth acts both as a boobie warmer and a boobie hider so Eleni doesn't disown me when she accidentally stumbles across this blog at 15 years old. 

Actually I'm lying. It's just to keep her warm.

Baby boobies are cute, so deal with it 15 year old Eleni.

We're having a very serious conversation here. 

It went like this:

 Mommy: "Did you just wee in the water?"

Eleni: Smiled and laughed

"Whatcha doin' Auntie Nicci?

Takin' pictures of me?...."

"Well take this! Pfffffffft!"

"Fine. You can take a picture of my usual, irresistibly adorable-ness" 

"I'm bored of this." 

This is what Eleni looks like while she's kicking her feet and getting everything and everyone soaked.

So serious.

She clearly does it on purpose.

And now, snuggly, cuddly, kissy, after bath time

Kalinikta!

UGH! HELP!

We have a HUGE problem!

Apparently I've used up all my free storage space and Blogger won't let me upload anymore pictures without paying a monthly fee.

Major sad face!

Does anyone know how to get around this? It's not that expensive but still....

And I have all these super cute bath time pictures to show you too!!!

UGGGHHHH! I can't catch a technological break like EVER can I?

If you have any info or even just ideas please leave a comment or message me on facebook or email me, or you can call me if you have my number, you could try to skype but I never leave it on anymore....does anyone write letters anymore? Don't write a letter, this will either be sorted out by the time it gets here or I'll have finally chucked my laptop over the balcony like I've been threatening for the last 6 months.

Please help! I'm devastated!

xoxo

Play Time

We're playing up a storm over here!

More specifically we've been spending a lot more time playing, but we've also had 2 days of pretty heavy storms...thanks to the storms I don't have any pictures for this blog post because as I was uploading them the power went out and now they're lost. I always erase the pictures from the memory card after uploading because I tend to take just a couple of pictures then put them on the computer for the blog, so there's no sense in keeping them on the memory card just to upload them 1000 times....but it would have been nice if I'd thought "hey, there's a storm out there today and a good chance the power's going to go out. Maybe I shouldn't click the 'erase after uploading' box today, just in case"....of course I didn't. And of course, with my luck with technology, they're gone.

Not a big deal though, it was just 3 pictures and a small video so I'll try to take them again soon. As for today though, you're stuck reading my ramblings without pictures. Those of you who come to the blog to strictly look at pictures and ignore my cheesy jokes and over the top bragging about my perfect child, you might as well continue on with your day now because I've got nothin' for ya.

Those of you who are still with me....

LET THE BRAGGING BEGIN!

Eleni's hand-eye coordination has really advanced this week and it's been so much fun watching her discover it. Actually, the hand-eye coordination isn't quite as good as the foot-eye coordination at the moment but I'm not sure that's even a term. I guess this falls under the category of motor skills? I'm not exactly sure, ask me tomorrow if I've managed to get some sleep. Yesterday was a bit of a rough day and night so forgive me if I'm writing complete gibberish today.

Anyway, she's really been enjoying kicking the crap out of a few of her toys lately. She has one in particular that if I translate it exactly from Greek to English it's called a floor gymnasium....but gymnasium gives the impression that it's an enormous contraption that's far too dangerous for a 2 month old. Really it's a mat with a bar that has some toys hanging off of it. It's jungle themed! (Are you excited? In case you couldn't tell, I am! Who doesn't love a good jungle theme?!)

So she lays on her back on the mat and there are 3 toys hanging from the bar that she can play with: an elephant with a mirror on its belly, which has been a big hit for about 3 weeks now, a lion and a penguin with rolling ball for a belly that when it's rolled it plays music....don't ask me how a penguin fits into a jungle theme but apparently in Greece it's totally normal for penguins to be running around with lions and elephants and monkeys. Anyway, Eleni's figured out that if she kicks the penguin she can make it play music. Mommy and Baba are so proud!! And slightly deaf now, but that's ok....

As for hand-eye coordination, she's started shaking her rattles this week! For weeks she's been holding on to them...with a death grip actually...but making them rattle would just happen randomly when she'd wave her arms around. It surprised her a few times when she heard them make a sound but now she's figured out that SHE made it make that sound. So she shakes the heck out of them with a giant smile on her face. Again, Mommy and Baba couldn't be more proud!! But if only I could stop the ringing in my ears....

We can tell that her eye sight has improved tremendously too because she stares at anything that's really colourful now. Especially anything with the colour red, which Baba is over the moon about because his favourite soccer team's colour is red...so of course this means she's an Olympiacos fan just like her Dad.

Right.

She's also discovered the tv. This is hilarious actually. She'll sit on your knee and stare intently at the tv for as long as we let her. She's totally amazed by it! And of course Baba again sees this as evidence that she's an Olympiacos fan because she's now officially managed to watch more games than Mommy ever has. She even got excited over a goal which of course totally wasn't a coincidence at all.....

We're still playing all the usual games like peek-a-boo, horsie, 'beeping' her nose etc, but now she's so much more vocal when she gets excited which is really cool. She coo's and oooh's and sometimes she even shrieks. She still hasn't figured out that she can laugh yet but she's so close that it should be anytime now. Beeping her nose is a particular favourite. It gets the cutest response so of course that means her nose gets 'beeped' probably 500 times a day. Even when other people touch her nose I say "beep beep". I can be across the room but I'll still yell out a "beep beep" without shame. Poor little thing will come running to me one day and say "Mommy, Mommy I think my nose is broken! I touched it and it didn't beep!".....but she'll probably be about 15 by then so I'm sure she'll get over it.

So that's what's new with us!

Bye!

Great Great Grandma's Sweater

Happy Halloween everyone!

I hope you're all having a great time stuffing your faces with candy and getting creative with pumpkins! And ladies, please try to get creative with your costumes too. One of my all time biggest pet peeves is when girls use Halloween as an excuse to walk out their front door wearing lingerie. Adding a pair of cat ears or devil horns doesn't mean you're wearing a costume. It means that you're dressed like a trollop and you have bad taste in accessories. 

Just saying...

Ok that was kind of harsh and I apologize. But I really do appreciate it when a little thought and creativity goes into a costume. It's been a while since I've been able to celebrate Halloween, but the last time I did I dressed up as The Paper Bag Princess. I love this story! It's a kids book by Robert Munsch about a Princess who plans to marry the perfect Prince Ronald. But a dragon drops in, destroys her kingdom, kidnaps the Prince and burns all her clothes forcing her to wear a paper bag. Long story short the princess sets out to rescue the prince from the evil dragon (you go girl!) but the douchebag prince is pissed that she's wearing a paper bag and looks like crap. So she dumps him and walks off into the sunset to live her life as a happy, independent woman. Here's a picture of my Paper Bag Princess costume:

That was a fun night. But I couldn't believe it when I ran into about 8 other Paper Bag Princesses that night....all of which had somehow managed to cut and tape together 'sexy' paper bag dresses, and had perfect hair and make-up. Did they even read the book?!?! Clearly not. I did feel a little sorry for them later on that night when it started pouring down rain. I'm sure their paper bags disintegrated and they all had to walk home in their underwear. I brilliantly thought ahead and completely waterproofed my paper bag with packing tape. 

But then again maybe they did think ahead since 85% women were dressed up in their underwear anyway....they probably had cat ears or devil horns in their purses just in case...

Anyhoo, tonight was a big night for me. 

I went to yoga!

That means I had to be away from Eleni for the first time ever. It was hard, but I did it. 

The class started at 7pm so I asked Yia yia to come over at 6:30 so I could show her where to find everything and what time to give Eleni her bottle etc. She of course arrived at 6:20, which if you know Greek people this is hilarious. Greeks are always late. ALWAYS! But when it involves their grandkids, they show up 10 minutes early and catch you in your kitchen, in your underwear, eating nutella straight out of the container. 

Or something like that.

So anyway, Eleni had her first babysitter and Mommy had her first time away. It went alright. The class was great, it was nice to see everyone and it felt great to stretch everything out. I did notice that by the end of the class though I couldn't concentrate anymore because I kept wondering if everything was ok back at the house. When I got back to the house Popou was here too and Eleni was wide awake and crying her eyes out. They of course assured me, with the biggest smiles on their faces, that everything was fine. And it was fine, it was just that they didn't know her bedtime routine and Eleni is not a fan of straying from the routine. I did try to explain the routine to Olympia before I left but she just kept saying "don't worry about it Tara, don't worry about it"...I wasn't worried. I was just trying to tell her what to do so Eleni wouldn't be wide awake and crying her eyes out when I came home. Maybe next time things will go a little more smoothly. But overall I was proud of myself for not having a panic attack and leaving yoga early because I'd imagined every possible thing that could go wrong while I was out. 

Here are some pictures from 2 days ago of Eleni wearing a sweater that her great great grandma Mabel made. Grandma Mabel passed away quite a few years ago now but my great aunt Lowie was cleaning out a closet this summer and found this baby sweater that grandma must have made forever ago. How crazy is that?! So she sent it along with my mom and dad when they came to visit. I'm so happy that Eleni gets to wear a Grandma Mabel Original just like everyone else in the McClure clan has. 

You'll notice that she's crying in every one of these pictures. I swear I didn't do anything to her, she just really hates it when people try to take pictures of her...but even her pissed-off face is cute as a button!

Actually she's not crying in this one...this must have been the first picture I guess

I love this little hat on her...she however, is not a big fan of hats. Hats and cameras. And breaking her routine. And beards. What can I say, the girl knows what she likes and won't put up with anything else. I have no idea where she gets that from....

Aren't we done yet Mom?? I'm so mad that I'm going to kick my feet so hard that my socks fall off! That's another thing she doesn't like...socks...

Then I thought if I could get her into a different chair maybe she'd forget she was upset about getting her picture taken...no dice!

This is the "sleep with one eye open Mommy" face

Speaking of sleep, I could really use some of that.

Good night!!

What a Week!

Saturday 9:24am...I may have just stumbled across 5 seconds of Me Time! (UPDATE: clearly I didn't find that much Me Time because it's now Monday 12:54am and I'm just getting back to this)

I won't get too excited though otherwise I'll just end up jinxing the whole thing and kicking myself over it for the rest of the day. (UPDATE: You did jinx yourself idiot. Never do that again!)

So lets pretend the baby's going to be awake in a few minutes and I have about half that time to write a blog post. The other half of that time....well, I have to pee but that's probably too much information. But this week has been a week involving semi-scheduled pee breaks. No joke. It's been kind of a rough week.

Last Sunday night the inevitable happened....Eleni got her first cold.

Eleni's reaction: still her usual smiley self (most of the time)

Mommy's reaction: total devastation and a complete lack of trust in others ability to do even the simplest of tasks

It was just a little snuffly nose, nothing to get up-tight about. But I of course was a nervous wreck and am still talking about the moments of sheer terror when a little bit of the sticky, snotty goop would drain into her throat and make her cough. "She's not coughing, she's choking!! Quick, pick her up and hit her back!! PICK HER UP DAMMIT  WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU???!!!! Oh my god, WHY CAN'T ANYONE EVER DO ANYTHING RIGHT??!!! I'm the only one who can look after her, all the rest of you are useless and can't be trusted!! I'm so tired! I hate everyone!! AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGG! (just so you know I didn't actually make that 'arg' sound. Why do we write 'arg' to signal frustration anyway? No one ever makes that sound!)

So I might have over reacted at times.

I do that once in a while.

Not often though.

....you can all stop laughing now thanks.

Anyway, so Eleni's first cold happened and she's still a snuffly from it. I have this great little contraption though that gently sucks that goopy stuff out of her nose. She's a bit iffy about it. Sometimes she smiles and gets excited about it but most of the time she turns her head, pushes my hand away, makes her angry face and gives me the silent treatment for a while. I'm already catching a glimpse of what her teenage attitude will be like. 

Monday we went to the doctor to make sure it was just a little cold, which it was so that was a relief. She smiled and put on her cutesy show for the doctor which of course made Mommy and Baba very proud. She's perfect! And we have witnesses!

Tuesday I woke up feeling like someone had shoved a rake up my nose. So that was great. Taking care of a sick baby is hard work but taking care of a sick baby when you're sick too really sucks. The living room was officially declared a bio-hazard that day but we survived and the next day we were both feeling a little bit better. Pretty tired though. Just when I'd started to get used to the 4 hours of sleep a night, we went down to 2 hours a night. Brutal!

Thursday we had Eleni's 2 month check up at the doctor. We would have just done it on Monday since we were already there but she was scheduled to get her first vaccines and apparently you can't do that while the baby is sick so we decided to keep our Thursday appointment and hope she was feeling well enough by then...actually I wasn't hoping that because I really don't want her to have to get any needles. Not because I'm against them, but because I'm against anything that makes her cry. She makes such a sad little face when she cries and it just breaks my heart. And I guess I got my wish because she was still a little too sick to get her shots so now we have to go back in 2 weeks. But the good news is that she is now 5.3 kg and 58 cm! So that just over 11 lbs and nearly 23 inches. She's growing so fast!

The worst part of the week though was getting a call from my Dad on Monday morning telling me that Brasco had passed away. It was just so unexpected that I didn't even know how to deal with it at first. I cried but then I instantly put it out of my head for about 3 days and refused to talk about it. I didn't want it to be true so I just pretended it wasn't. I'm doing better now and have slowly started talking about him again but it's still so hard. I'd had him since he was 8 weeks old and he's been such a big part of my life for the last 7 years. Unfortunately my landlords here in Greece decided they didn't want him living here anymore and we weren't able to find a new place to live so in January 2011 I brought him back to Canada with me and he moved in with Mom and Dad...or Grandma and Grandpa as Brasco called them. Leaving him to come back to Greece was heartbreaking enough. They weren't sure exactly what it was, either a heart attack or a stroke. The comfort in all this is that he wasn't alone when he died, both Mom and Dad were with him the whole time and he passed peacefully. I don't think I would be able to deal with it at all if he'd been alone. I would have felt like I'd totally abandoned him. I already felt like that, which is stupid because he had a great life with my Mom and Dad. Much better than he had over here. He had a big yard to run around in, way more doggy treats than I ever allowed him to have, a much more comfortable climate that included snow (one of his favourite snacks). And of course he always loved Grandma and Grandpa. Those damn cats were kind of a pain in the ass but he was a good sport, even when they stole his bed and made him sleep on the floor. Anyway, I loved him to pieces and I miss him very much.

So that was my week. It was kind of rough so lets hope this week goes a little better. Lets hope it goes a lot better actually, I'm heartbroken, exhausted and I look like a zombie. Greece doesn't celebrate Halloween which is unfortunate because I wouldn't have had to even make a costume this year. Anyway, here's a few pictures for you....

Eleni having a snooze at the restaurant  

  I just found this picture of Eleni, it's from 2 weeks ago and can't believe how much she's changed in just 2 weeks...I promise to take some pics of her tomorrow so you can see the difference. She's chubbier. I think she has more hair too

 Brasco bear chilling out on the deck in Molyvos

 Brasco bear chilling out on the deck in Cumberland

 Playing in snow

 Rolling in the snow

 Eating the snow

Getting ready for a nap in the snow

I'll try to write again soon but if I don't get a chance before Wednesday I wish everyone a safe and Happy Halloween!!! Don't forget to floss!!

Life's a Beach

I've been avoiding using that title all summer because it just seems too obvious, not to mention completely unoriginal. But now that it's 7am and I've been up since 5am, obvious and and unoriginal will do just fine thanks!

Wednesday was the big day....

ELENI'S FIRST TRIP TO THE BEACH!!! 

We're having amazing weather right now and even though it's the middle of October, I hear the sea is lovely. We didn't go swimming on Wednesday unfortunately because we didn't get there until 5pm. It would have been a perfectly fine temperature for Antonis and I to go in but the air's a little cooler in the evening's now so I didn't think Eleni would appreciate it very much. So we just lounged on the beach in our bikini's and had a look around. We did get our little feet in the water though which was very exciting, so she had a tiny preview of what to expect next summer.

Baby Bikini Time! (it's a little big for her so it's more of a tankini really)

Rolling around

She loved the feeling the sand underneath her...she told me that

Telling Dad he needs to put his bikini on to (hmmm, there's no pictures of me in my bikini...that's weird...oh well, maybe next year)