Announcement!

I figured I better not make you wait any longer for this announcement I teased you with in my last post. I don't think I can handle anymore threatening emails! Just kidding, there weren't any threatening messages...just a little verbal abuse and some name calling, no big deal. But I fully admit I had it coming.

Before I tell you what's up, first I want to share with you some interesting statistics. I did actually get a lot of messages about this, and everyone who wrote to me had a guess as to what this announcement may be. 

Here are your guesses and the percentage of how often that guess occurred:

"Are you pregnant again?!".......100% 

Seriously, 100% of you who wrote to me about this think that I'm about to tell you I'm pregnant again.

Here's another statistic:

YOU WERE ALL 100% WRONG! 

But good try, better luck next time!

No, I am NOT pregnant again! Sure I might still wear the maternity jeans every now and then but that does not mean I'm growing baby #2....it's simply because I still have a rather Kardashian-esque booty. That's all! But I have to say, I did find it pretty funny you all thought the same thing.

So here is the announcement that shockingly, none of you guessed:

WE'RE COMING TO CANADA!!!!!!

Wooooooo hoooooooo!!!!!! There isn't enough room on this page for the number of exclamation marks needed after that 'Woo hoo', that's how excited I am!

Before I get too carried away, we don't have all of the details worked out just yet, but here is what we DO know:

• Sometime between mid October and mid November Eleni and I will be coming home to stay with my parents until probably sometime in April
• Why? Because I have a massive student loan payment I have to pay every month, and considering this is a summer holiday destination, it's not that easy to make the payments during the winter months when we don't have any tourists....SO the bottom line is that I need a job and there just aren't any winter jobs for me around here that would cover that payment

So at this point, that is all we know for sure. We're hoping that Antonis can come as well but we'll have to talk about what's going to happen with the restaurant over the winter....should we get someone else to come in and work for him? Could Lefteris and their parents handle it by themselves? Should we just save our butts off this summer so we can pay 5 or 6 months of rent and then close the place until next season? Maybe Lefteris will want to come with us and find a job too? Maybe none of these ideas will work and Antonis will have to stay here while we go to Canada? We don't know. But we DO know that Eleni and I will be there when the tourist season ends this year and we'll come back to Greece to get things ready for the beginning of the next season. And that will likely mean November to April, but we'll have to see how the season goes...maybe it will end earlier or later than usual, we don't know yet...and it also depends on when Greek Easter is next year because we'll need to be back here in time for that. 

So no, the news isn't quite as big as announcing a pregnancy but did I still manage to shock you? Are you excited????? I'm excited! Well, I'm not going to be that excited if Antonis can't come with us but I'm sure we'll figure something out, so for now I'm pretty excited!! I can't wait to introduce Eleni to everyone! And she can't wait to meet you!

I'll be looking for part-time work so please keep your ears and eyes open and let me know if you hear of anything. I need to stay on the island because I want my Mom to take care of Eleni while I'm working, but since I know I'm only going to be there for about 6 months I'm not going to be too picky about what job I take. Ideally I'd like to get a couple of contracts to work with children with autism or other special needs, but usually that requires a full year commitment which I definitely won't be able to do. But you never know, something might work out with that which would be great. Otherwise, I've always loved working at gyms. And I don't like to brag but I'm kind of a legend in the waitressing scene....

Anyway, that's what's going on and I'll keep you all updated as decisions and plans progress!

Just a quick update about Eleni......I think she's decided that crawling isn't good enough for her because she's been spending most of her time pulling herself up to standing on EVERYTHING! She's also started babbling a lot. Her first one was "Dadadadadadada" and now it's "Baba!Baba!Baba!" so it seems as though after everything I do for her, Baba is her favourite parent. I'm not worried about it though....I'm pretty sure I'm going to be way better at playing Barbies than he is so I still have a chance at first place yet!

Here's a few photos from yesterday. Eleni and I went to the restaurant in the afternoon to visit Baba. She also met a horse for the first time yesterday but since I have a pretty intense (and irrational) phobia of horses, I was more focused on not being trampled, kicked or bitten then on taking pictures at that moment....but here's a few that Antonis and I took from the safety of inside the restaurant, far away from any giant, man-eating Clydesdales

Feeding time! 

I didn't know I was in the picture so I'm not looking particularly happy here, but I really was! 

I'm also not wearing any make-up so I hope I don't scare any of you!

Multitasking! Eating and trying to steal the camera away from Baba

Now we're both totally oblivious to Baba's photoshoot

Can I have it please? I promise I won't chew or drool on it!

Yiayia and Papous bought Eleni a walker last week...these are actually banned in Canada and you can't buy them anywhere because of how dangerous they are so I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. 

But she's not very good at it yet anyway and there weren't any stairs or cliffs around so it seemed to be ok at this particular moment.

Baba, I'm going to try really hard to get over there and when I get there, 

THAT CAMERA IS MINE!

This one's my favourtite!

Our budding chef, helping her Theo Lefteris in the kitchen

Type to you soon!

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!

Cauliflower? Yuck!

Hi again!

Eleni seems to be having a nice long nap so I managed to get to this a bit sooner than expected. If you've opened this post first, just so you know I also added another blog post earlier today that's full of pictures of our gorgeous little 6 month old so make sure you check those out. She's growing so fast and changing so much now, it crazy to compare what she looks like and what she can do today to what she was like her first few months!

So Blogger has created a new way to link videos onto your blog...it seems to be a lot faster and easier but we'll see if this actually works because we all know how this kind of crap and I just never seem to be able to get it together. Please let me know if you have trouble getting this video to play and I'll just do things the now 'old fashioned way' and post the YouTube link for you. This is from yesterday, Eleni's reaction to a brand new taste: CAULIFLOWER! Cauliflower's one of my fav's, but I don't think Eleni agrees....

So far she's tried carrots, banana, apple, rice cereal and now cauliflower. Banana's are the favourite, carrots and apples we can get down without a fight but not much enthusiasm either, but rice cereal and cauliflower? No dice! She gags, she pushes the spoon away, she spits and she gets really angry with me. It's kind of funny when she gets angry about it though, she yells at me in her baby babble which sounds a lot like an obnoxiously drunk sailor. She was a bit easier on me this day, the babble sounded more like a calm lecture rather than a verbal ass kicking. I guess she's trying a new approach. I'm really glad she's decided to give up the cursing. The next veggie we're going to try is potatoes...I'll let you know how that goes. It shouldn't be too much of a problem since they don't have a strong taste. And here's hoping that it goes so well that I can use them as a base to mix in other things like pureed peas, spinach, and whatever other vegetable that I'm sure if I tried to give to her straight they'd just be flung right back in my face. That reminds me, I should really look into some safety goggles and possibly a hair net......

As usual, not too much is new around here. Eleni is still trying very hard to crawl and she's getting closer but it will still be a little while yet. Although yesterday I put her down on the floor with her toys and I walked into the kitchen to throw away a rather disgusting diaper (by the way, the cauliflower diapers are making mommy gag and swear like a sailor so we're going to discuss whether this should be a banned substance in the Mallis house), and when I came back to the living room maybe 10 seconds later she was about 3 feet away from where I'd left her!!! How did she do that??? Did she roll? She's really good at rolling around so it's possible, but somehow she got underneath her swing, and the swing is on a base that would be pretty difficult for her to roll over. So maybe she crawled? I have no idea! All I know was she was suddenly getting at a toy that I'd decided to hide waaaaay off into a corner that she couldn't get to because it seemed a bit too dangerous for her to play with at this stage. Figures! I can't believe this is starting already....wish me luck! Anyway, I'll keep an eye on this situation and let you know what I discover. My other theory is that she's from the future and she knows how to teleport....we'll see.....

Saturday was a really fun day. Our friends Yannis and Tara had a birthday party for their son Yorgos, he turned 3. I wasn't sure how Eleni was going to react because it was right at the time she usually takes her afternoon bottle and nap so I didn't know if she was about to get really tired and fussy, or maybe she'd just sleep anyway, I had no idea. Also there was going to be a lot of kids there, more than she'd ever been around at one time. As soon as we got there I sat down with her on the couch so she could assess the situation. I gave her her bottle, while she continued to watch all the little people and toys they were playing with. After her bottle I just let her sit on my lap to decide for herself if she wanted to sleep or to play or to scream bloody murder so we'd have to run out of there really quickly.....but suddenly she started waving her arms around, and wiggling her little bum around and squealing and screetching with excitement. So I took that as a sign that we'd be skipping the afternoon nap and instead, it was party time!

I was so impressed with her, she wasn't the least bit shy with anyone. Actually she was the complete opposite of that, she was very social....as social as a 6 month old can be anyway. She wanted to be in the middle of all the action, trying out all the toys and meeting all the kids. Miltos and Maria were there with their kids Apostolis and Michaela, Apostolis is 4 and Michaela is almost exactly one year older than Eleni. We've been meaning to get the kids together for a long time but we  haven't had the chance until Saturday. Anyway, they were SO cute together. Michaela is such a sweetheart, giving Eleni toys to play with and putting her soother in her mouth which Eleni thought was so much fun. Eleni babbled away to her and Michaela just looked at her smiling as if she understood every word. But poor Apostolis' nearly had all his hair yanked out thanks to our over-excited little one, but I guess since he has a little sister he's used to that kind of thing because he didn't even react. In fact he looked a little bored. Our friends Naomi and Theo were there with their daughter Panayiota, who is also one year older than Eleni. Eleni and Panayiota have met a few times before and Eleni always seems completely amazed by her...probably because she can walk and talk and Eleni's trying to figure out how a little person just like herself can do such things! Which is good because it encourages her to try new things because she wants to do everything her friend is doing.

We were home by 8pm and I'd planned to give Eleni a bath but she fell asleep half way through her bottle and she didn't even make a sound until 7am the next morning. She woke up still wearing her party clothes...I remember when I used to do that too.....

We had another scare with Papous two nights ago. He wasn't able to sleep at all because he was having problems with his breathing. Olympia and Yorgos took him to the doctor the next morning and they did some tests but we're still waiting to hear back about the results. He seemed a bit better yesterday so hopefully it was nothing to worry about. I'll keep you posted about what's happening with him but I'm pretty sure this 94 year old is just fine and has no intention of going anywhere anytime soon. In fact I'd even bet he's healthier than most of us are!

Speaking of health, I've been getting back into yoga again. I've done it everyday for the last 2 weeks and I'm noticing a big difference already in my strength and flexibility. I'm still not ready for running or anything that intense yet which has been a big surprise to me because I figured I'd be back into working out after a few months but I guess not. So yoga it is for now and I'm perfectly ok with that. If anyone from around here is interested, Katrine is teaching a fantastic yoga class Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings at 7pm in the harbour. If you've been practicing yoga for years or if you've never done it in your life, or even if you have an injury you need to careful of it doesn't matter, she has something for everyone. And it's free! So come with me! It's fun! And we can go to the restaurant for wine after! Which is also fun!

Well, Eleni's has woken up from her marathon long nap....3 hours! I can't believe it! She did this yesterday too and until then she'd never napped for more than an hour! I guess being 6 months old changes a person. Anyway, I'm going to go snuggle that gorgeous little petunia.

Bye for now!

6 Months!

Happy half a year Eleni Sofia!!!!!

Here are a bunch of photos I took of her yesterday......

Chatting with mom while she washes the dishes

I'm gonna get the camera!

Almost!

Laughing

Happy baby

Are we done with the stupid camera yet??

She just tried cauliflower for the first time....and I don't think she could spit any harder to get it out of her mouth! I have a video of trying to feed her the cauliflower and I'll be uploading that soon, hopefully by tomorrow. I'll also write an update of what's been going on around here then too...today I'll just give you the photos.

I can sit up all by myself!

Watching TV

Oh I love this show!

Chewing on her toys....still waiting for those little teeth to pop through

I'm gonna get your camera again Mom...AND watch TV at the same time

A Lovely Visit....

Hello!

I hope everyone's doing great! We're all good over here. Nothing exciting is happening though so I'll warn you right now, this is yet another blog devoted completely to bragging about baby. So if you're hoping for an update about Molyvos, this is all you're gonna get.....it's been raining. Ok it hasn't been raining constantly, we've had some nice days...today was gorgeous...but most of my time lately has been spent in the house, trying to stay dry and constantly bringing the laundry inside from the rain, then back out again when it stops, and then inside again, and back out again and on and on and on. I've been trying to dry the same load of laundry for 3 days! At this point the dirty pile is almost taller than me since I can't wash anything else until I have a place to hang it up to dry. I'm having nightmares that the giant pile of laundry is going to fall on me and I'll be crushed and suffocated under wet, stinky towels and baby onesies covered in various kinds of bodily fluids.

This is stupid. I'm talking about laundry. I seriously need to get out more.

Ok, so back to our usual talking about Eleni. Here's the update on her:

• We're still waiting for her little teeth to pop through...we're almost there! I've been saying that for what seems like forever now but I think now, they really are almost here. At least I hope so anyway because this whole tooth growing business has not been easy for anyone. 

• She's rolling around like crazy! From back to front and front to back and then sometimes 3 or 4 rolls in a row to the point where she stops and she's a little bit dizzy and confused about how she got so far away from where she was before which is always funny.

• She's mostly sleeping through the night now...except for those nights when her teeth are bothering her but for the most part she goes to bed around 8:30 or 9:00pm and sleeps until 6:30 or 7:00am. I know 6:30am doesn't sound that appealing but trust me, when you've gotten used to waking up every 2 or 3 hours all night long for 5 months straight...waking up just once at 6:30am is no big deal.

• She's sitting up on her own now! She's still a little unbalanced so you have to be ready for the face plant into the floor at any moment but she can sit in one place without having to be held and she can move left and right to grab toys without falling. It's just when she wants to get something that's a little bit of a far reach in front of her when she topples over...she toppled pretty hard today and both of us cried. She's fine of course. I'm still a little shaken up....

• So since she's sitting up so well and has gotten to be a pro at rolling around....she's trying to crawl! I can't even believe it, my baby is almost crawling. She can't do it yet but she's trying so it won't be long from now. Especially because when she really wants to do something, she gets so pissed off that she just keeps at it until she gets it. She yells and complains the whole time but she won't give up. Determined little thing! I wonder where she gets that from....

• We're eating solid food! Again, I can't even believe it! My baby is eating big people food! It hasn't been an easy transition though. She's hated everything she's tried but after 3 or 4 more times of trying the same thing she becomes more willing to open her mouth for the airplane/rocket ship/race car/motorbike/various animals spoon. Imagination and sound effects are necessary though. I guess it's just the new textures and eating from a spoon that's probably a bit weird for her right now but she's slowly getting used to it and hopefully we're getting close to that day where she just can't wait for the next spoonful of mushy veggies. So far she's had carrots, apples, banana and rice cereal. Tomorrow she's going to try pears so we'll see how that goes. We also have a lot of cauliflower in our garden right now so I'll probably give her a bit of that next week. I'm making all my own baby food because it's so much healthier but it's also really easy and pretty inexpensive. Except the rice cereal of course. Unfortunately we don't have a lot of choice for healthy baby cereals over here, almost everything is full of sugar which I really don't like. But luckily I've at least found the rice cereal which doesn't have any taste but it's good for her at least and filling. Hopefully I can find a few more brands that are healthy also, so we can switch things up every now and then.

• And last but not least....we have a little impressionist on our hands. Any strange sound you can make with your mouth, she'll find a way to copy it. She'll stare at your mouth to see what all the different parts are doing and then she tries it out for herself. Spitting is her favourite, you know the one where you stick your tongue out and blow? I think it's called a raspberry? Anyway, she's spitting all over the place and thinks it's hilarious. "Eleni do you want some milk?" "Pfffflllrrrbp hahahaha!" "Eleni can I have a kiss?" "Pppplllllip hahahaha!" So far I'm letting it go because it's cute but I'm sure I'll regret this decision later. She also makes a kissing sound but she puts her tongue between her lips and smacks them together. It makes the same sound as a kiss so she's pretty proud of that one. She growls like a bear, makes car sounds, clicking, you name it she does it. Tonight I got the hiccups...she stared at me with her eyebrows all scrunched up for a few seconds then she got a big smile across her face, made a perfect hiccupping sound and then fell over laughing. It was so funny I had to call Antonis at work and tell him about it. She's too cute!

I think that's it? It seems like in the last couple of weeks she's learned so many new things so if I'm forgetting something don't worry, I'll fill you in later.

Last weekend we had a really nice visit with our friend Torsten. Antonis hadn't opened the restaurant up yet and it had been a month since we'd seen him so after the olive trees were picked and Antonis and Eleni were over their disgusting runny noses...we were finally able to invite Torsten over for coffee and muffins. Eleni's a huge fan! He speaks Swedish to her and she just stares at him as if she's in a trace. It's so adorable! If you saw my blog post from a few days ago I posted a link to his blog where he's put up an amazing picture of Eleni from that day. But being the lovely friend he is, he emailed me 6 others that are equally stunning. I asked him if he would mind if I put them up on my blog and he of course said he'd be happy to share them. So with a very big thank you to Torsten, here are the photos he took of Eleni last Saturday:

Making her kissing sound

So thank you very much again to my favourite Viking and his amazing photography skills!

Ok, so I'm pooped. Last night was another teething night so I'm running on about 2 1/2 hours of sleep. I'm going to roll out my yoga mat, try to do it bit of exercise and hope that when Antonis comes home he finds me sound asleep in bed and not snoring and drooling on my yoga mat in the middle of the livingroom floor.

Wish me luck!

Just a Little Bit...

Hey everyone,

Long time no talk! Or type I guess I should say. Anyhoo I just thought I'd let you know that I plan on writing a new post or 2 this week with some new pictures, so don't give up on me yet! Antonis and Lefteris will be reopening the restaurant tomorrow so we've been trying to make the most of his last couple of weeks home before he starts another year of basically 24/7 work....ok it's not actually 24 hours a day but it is 7 days a week so that's still pretty rough. But since I'll be all by my lonesome in the evenings from now on...after Eleni goes to sleep of course...I'll have a little bit of ME time to do such things as update this blog. YAY! Honestly I really miss doing this when it's been a while between posts....I guess my nonsense ramblings have some sort of therapeutic affect or something. Affect or effect? Ugh, damn you Mr. Jarvis and your grade 7 English class...the only thing I remember from that class is putting tacks on his chair on a daily basis and waiting for the day that he actually felt them when he sat down. That day never came. How is that even possible? Anyway, the point to that story is my grammar is garbage because I was juvenile delinquent. Just in case you were wondering. And what does any of this have to do with today? Absolutely nothing. I just got lost on a tangent. As per usual. But for some reason I feel oddly attached to this little story so I can't bring myself to delete it. Also as per usual....

I should really stop this train before it completely derails, but to get everyone else back on track I suggest you check out another blog.....this one to be exact:

http://lesvosimprints.blogspot.gr/2013/02/breathtaking-winter-days-gossiping.html

Yet another stunning piece by my good friend Torsten! And Eleni adores him as you can see by the photo...I don't know how he does it be somehow when he points HIS camera at her, it works. When I point MY camera at her she either freezes, tries to grab it away from me or as of lately, yells at me.
He must teach me!

So, enjoy the gorgeous photos of Molyvos in Winter and of course our beautiful little Eleni.

Type to you soon!

A Canadian Penguin

Hey!

I recently had an interesting conversation with a person here that I thought was very cute. So cute in fact that it inspired this morning's playtime...which of course led to today's baby photo shoot....

I don't know about you but I've noticed time and again that when people from different countries get together a common topic of conversation tends to be about each other's countries. And why not? I like learning about other countries and cultures and people. You never know, just when you think you've completed your list of Must See places to go to in your lifetime, you could meet someone that makes you realize you need to add another country to that list. So I really don't mind when people over here ask me questions about Canada. I like it actually. Some are probably just trying to make conversation but I'm sure there are at least a few who are genuinely interested in learning about our beautiful hunk of rock. Either way, I'm happy to tell them all about it.

There are the common questions: 

1. What's the population of Canada? 
2. How long does it take to fly there from Mytilini or Athens?
3. What's the time difference? 
4. If you're in Vancouver and you want to go to Quebec to see Miltos and Valerie, how long does it take to get there?

The answers to these questions usually shock and mystify. Especially the last one because often they already have guessed that it would take quite a few hours...by car. When I tell them it's about 4 or 5 hours by plane....BY PLANE?!?! Yes. By plane. Canada is massive.

But it's the not so common questions that are really fun...even if they don't get quite the same reaction as the last one. 

Here's the conversation I had recently:

Them: "Do you have penguins in Canada?"

Me: "Ummmm, no"

Them: "Oh. But it's really cold there right?"

Me: "In some places yes but not always and not everywhere"

Them: "Oh. But I saw on tv that you have polar bears.."

Me: "We do have polar bears"

Them: "And you have those people that live in ice houses..what are they called?"

Me: "The people or the houses...?"

Them: "Eh, both"

Me: "Ice houses are igloos and the people are Inuit" 

Them: "Inuit? I thought they were Eskimos or something like that"

Me: "Yeah it's not really politically correct to call them Eskimos anymore, now it's Inuit"

Them: "Why?"

Me: "Ummmm, I don't know actually"

Them: "Huh. Ok. So some parts of Canada are really really cold, so cold that some people live in igloos and you have polar bears"

Me: "Yep"

Them: "But no penguins?"

Me: "Nope. No penguins. Why?"

Them: "Oh I was just curious"

I'm sure you can already tell but "Them" was about 7 or 8 years old. I thought it was just so cute that of all the questions you could ask he wanted to know if we had penguins. And clearly he'd put some thought into this because from his interrogation about polar bears and igloos etc, I think he'd already decided that there must be penguins in Canada because why wouldn't there be if you have all those other things? 

Ok so we don't have penguins in Canada. But because no one's ever asked me that before, and because his logic was pretty good and almost had me second guessing myself....I present to you the first ever

Canadian Penguin

There's no penguin hat in this one but she's so proud of herself for being able to stick her tongue out on purpose now...and to sometimes spit with it...so I had to throw it in anyway

And as for another thing I just can't help but throw in....here is the stupidest question anyone has ever asked me about Canada:

Them: "How do you say 'Cheers' in Canadian"
Me: ".......it's 'Cheers'"
Them: "Oh it's the same as in England!"
Me: "........"