Month: July 2014

I truly am amazed that the things I’ve learned since becoming a mother.  There is nothing that can prepare you for all the emotions that you go through as well as the benchmarks in your little one’s life.  As I mentioned previously I’ve been peed on, pooped on and puked on.  Now normally that would bother me tremendously but as a mom, you just wash it off and move on.

When I started this blog my goal was to share certain ethnic traditions that as a Greek mom I’d partake in that my peers of an other ethnicity may not.  One thing I realized is that as a first generation Greek American I wasn’t privy to all of the nursery rhymes that my peers were.  Why is this you might ask?  Well firstly because my parents didn’t really speak English when I was born so how could they relate them to me?  Secondly I didn’t learn English until I went to school and in the beginning I went to I guess what would be called an immersion school today where I had Greek teachers so I could always fall back on the Greek if I needed to.  Thirdly as you get older the mind is the first thing to go 🙂   So I was sitting in one of our mommy group classes and the presenter was going over all these nursery rhymes and to my embarrassment I maybe knew three of them.   The other mommy/child pairs were singing along and little Miss and I were trying to keep up.  When I came home it got me thinking about my favourite Greek nursery rhymes and I thought I’d start sharing them with you.  So the first one goes out to my cousin P as she says that I used to drive everyone crazy with it when I was younger, especially on car rides from the North Shore to Cape Cod!

Το πράσινο φως
Το πράσινο φως
Εμείς θα το περάσουμε
Και ‘σεις θα μείνετε πίσω!

The green light
The green light
We are going to pass it
And you all will stay back!

Okay so it doesn’t translate amazingly but if you’re Greek you get it 🙂  More nursery rhymes to come in future posts.  For now I’m having fun watching pappou and yiayia share them with my own little one.

So my darling husband has been working on renovations the last ten days at work and has been gone for many hours at a time.  So he was seeing her sleeping when he left in the morning and sleeping when he arrived in the wee hours of the night.  If I dropped in to see him he’d ask how the little one was doing and my normal response would be, she’s great, I just put her down or she’s great, I just put her to sleep.  My husband looked at me weirdly whenever I used either saying.  I guess I really wasn’t thinking about how it sounded but rather was saying what the task at hand had been.  We’ve now decided that I would say I put her in her crib and she’s sleeping for the night.  It makes my hubby feel better…now let’s just hope I can remember 😉

Is there any language that you use/used that was questioned by family or friends?  Any funny stories?

Happy Friday everyone!!

Sorry for not having written in a while, the little Miss and I have been busy bees.  Yiayia and pappou have come to visit us and we’ve been having a great time.  Nothing beats having them spend time with my little one, it means so much to all of us.  We have had some great morning walks along the lakefront and of course nothing beats bath time and getting yiayia all wet!

I can’t believe she turned 3 months yesterday!  It is amazing to see her little personality grow and of course see her achieve all these new firsts.  We’re not rolling yet but we certainly can lift our heads and we seem very drawn to the new TV that daddy bought.  Needless to say mommy now listens to the radio a lot more!

She loves to be outside and I can’t wait to see her explore the outdoors next summer.  As we get into the dog days of summer we’re trying to find a balance of outdoor activities (early morning before it gets too hot) and some indoor ones.  What did you like to do with your newborn that you’d recommend we’d try?  Let us know.

One of my favourite quotes comes from a Salt & Peppa song of all places: “Opinions are like ass holes and everybody’s got one!”  I don’t think I truly knew what this meant until I had a child.  It amazes me how people always have two cents to share when it comes to children.  How you should dress them, how you should raise them, how you should scold them, etc. I don’t believe that I ever offered an opinion to my friends who were raising children before me unless I was asked, but if I did offer unsolicited advice, please accept my sincerest apology.

I also never realized the amount of parenting groups that are on the various social media channels.  Parents essentially post their problems and in one group, have up to 10,000 people who can ‘advise’ them on the issue having gone through it themselves or just offering advice.

During our mommy group yesterday we had a sleep specialist come in and talk to us about things we can do to get our little ones down.  She referenced how please as a parent, take the time to seek out professional advice as opposed to just posting your questions on Facebook for randoms to comment.  I found it interesting that in the day of social media and everyone being so connected with our smartphones we rather post/tweet/pin our issue than actually seek out knowledgeable individuals in the field of our issue.  Now having been up for 48 hours and at your wits end I understand it is easier to post something on Facebook at 3am than wait until 9am when an office will open but I just advise be careful as to what advice you are getting and how you’re using it.

Opinion, opinions, opinions, the only ones that really matter are those of yours and your partner.  Take everything with a grain of salt and remember you’re the parent for a reason!

As an American transplanted to Canada I get to celebrate two holidays this week.  First, today is Canada Day.  A day to celebrate Canada’s birthday.  Later this week we’ll get to celebrate the 4th of July.  With everything going on in the world it is amazing to be able to celebrate not one but two of these holidays!

The past week was a great one.  I think the little one may have been going through a growth spurt, not that I’m an expert and all…LOL not!   But she displayed some of the actions that we had at 4 weeks.  We’ll find out at her next appointment.  Hubby and I take bets now on height and weight, did/do any of you do this?

One interesting phenomenon that I know all of you moms out there and probably some of you dads have been a part of is the one handed eating.  Your child is cranky and you can’t do anything to please them so you hold them while at the table.  Now I can count on one hand the times this has happened to us but one was this past weekend.  The little one was asleep as we decided to stop for some lupper (lunch/supper) at a local sushi restaurant.  As luck would have it her eyes fluttered wide open as our water was put on the table.  I knew that the quiet phase wouldn’t last throughout the entire meal.  Now there were only two other tables of people at the restaurant so I wasn’t too worried about her crying but was conscious of these people.  So as she became crankier I picked her up out of her car seat and held her.  The goal was to get her back to sleep.  After some rocking and some walking this did the trick.  So at this point the food is on the table and I have a sleeping child in my arms.  I wasn’t 100% confident in my put down technique so what did I do but hold her and eat.  So here I am with chopsticks in hand eating my food with the eyes of all the servers on me.  It really was quite comical for me as I really didn’t think anything of it and they were in awe.  I figured that none had kids.   Hubby and I enjoyed our meal, I put her back in the car seat and she slept all the way home.  A few months ago I may have seen a woman like me and thought she was crazy or asked  myself why even go out if you can’t enjoy it.  The thing is I did enjoy it.  The food was good, the company was even better and all was well in babyland!

So again regardless of where you might be reading from this week: Happy Canada Day! Happy 4th of July!