Visiting the cavers

Hello little one



On Wednesdays, Daddy usually goes to meet with his friends at the SELAS Caving Club. Before you were born, he used to go every Wednesday to see his friends and discuss where they would all go for exploring the coming weekend. Daddy hadn’t been for quite a few months, so he was looking forward to it. His friends at the club were meeting to arrange what they would be doing with their summer holidays so there was a lot of people there, and for this reason we dressed you up in your nice stripy outfit for you first meeting.

Daddy's friend Sophia held you for most of the night. It was great fun because Mummy and Daddy left you with Sophia and had a chance to go around and talk with their friends.



Here you are with Sophia with the climbing wall in the background. Everyone else who has brought their kids to the club has put them to play on the climbing wall. When you are a little older, you can play too. You are the second girl in the club after a line of seven boys, so it will be up to you and Nina (Prodromos' sister) to show the boys that girls can be little explorers too. Sophia took you round to show you all the photos on the walls with caving subjects which you liked.



Here is little Jason, one of the seven boys in the club. His Mummy is doing all sorts of tricks with him, throwing him in the air and over her shoulder. One day Daddy is going to play with you like Eri is playing with baby Jason.



These last two photos of you show you with Kelly at the club and while you are eating in the tackle-store. Daddy used to be in charge of the tackle store but now it is Jason's daddy who is in charge of this. Can you tell where you are in the photo on the right? You are under the sling, eating. In the background are some of the SELAS ropes.

A trip to the sea...

On Sunday 28 June, Mummy and Daddy put you in the car and we all went south for a different sort of adventure. It was high time, we felt, that you should hear and smell the sea. You can't grow up into a little explorer if you don't know about the sea and haven't looked out over the flat horizon and wondered about what's on the other side of the water, what sort of people they are and how they run their cities. We have been to the mountain three times now, so it was time for the sea.



Some of Mummy's friends live close to the sea: Aggeliki with George and Theodora and of course Maria T, who is in the photo with us below.



You didn't seem too impressed with the sea, and slept for most of the time that we were out there. I guess you are not ready yet for the concept of the infinite boundlessness that the horizon forces us to face. Daddy prefers the comfort of a high and jagged horizon with hills and mountains limiting the space in which he can move, although he does recognize and occasionally seek out the stimulus that the sea can provide for freeing horizontal thought from the shackles of the nearby.

Some photos from 23 June

You are now about seven weeks old.




The top photo is a favourite of Mummy's because of your mortiko look. In the bottom one, you are playing in Penny's gym again.

Paediatrician on 11 June

On 11 June the nice Paediatrician came and said you were looking good. You are now 57cm long, up from 53, with a head circumference of 36cm and you weigh in at a whopping 3770 gr!

He said that any similarities you have to the frogs will wear off in time and we should not be worried.

The Noah story

On Monday 8 June, Daddy read to you from the book that cousins Irene and Evgenia sent from America. The story is probably very popular in America because it proves that god created everything and that nasty darwin got it all wrong. Daddy likes the book because it has finger puppet animals which keep your attention.

Gym time and the stairway to heaven...

When you were 35 days old, Daddy put you on the gym-mat that Penny his co-worker got for you. It's great! It has all sorts of colours, it plays music and has all sorts of textures to touch and chew on, together with a whole range of funny things hanging from the top. Look how excited you are with it all in these images:

We can see how much fun you are having in this video as well.



After you had played in the gym, Daddy decided to sing to you. He sang about a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold...



He then got all excited and put a CD on for you, 'cos you know sometimes words have two meanings…

Later on that day, Mummy's friends Alexandros and Lisa came to give us invitations for their wedding. This is going to happen on June 21 and it will be your very first public appearance in a pubic place and public function. Mummy and Daddy are very excited about this.



Lisa has a lot of nephews and nieces and knows exactly how to hold a baby. You were both very calm together, while Alexandros seemed a little surprised at how much Daddy knows about having a baby in the house. He doesn't realise that Daddy is picking it all up as it goes along and that he'll learn it all just as easily!

A special visit - 34 days old

When you were 34 days old, Mummy and Daddy had a special visitor. This special visitor is none other than General Lia, who organised Mummy and Daddy's wedding in October last year! She hadn't had an opportunity to see you yet and she had come all the way from the island of Syros to see you.

You were very nice and quiet in her arms while she told us all stories about how life is on the islands of the Cyclades during the rainy winter months. The Cyclades used to be heavily wooded in the past thanks to that same rain that Lia was telling us about, but after the Venetians came, they felled the trees to make ships and, as usual, the future was sacrificed on the altar of the present, this time by over-logging.

Speaking of which, there's a large forest called the Amazon in South America. I am curious how much of it will be left by the time you read these pages.

Photos from day 33...

Here we are, you together with Daddy and you are interacting with him by sticking your tongue out! Daddy thinks it's funny. He was home early, even though it is a Thursday, because we were expecting a visit from a very dear friend. Erato came to see you and she took some nice photographs of you in the bath and getting dry. Daddy likes the photographs that Erato takes of him.




Erato had never seen a baby as small as you and found it very strange. At first she was a little uneasy and you were not that keen on going into a new set of arms, but you both got used to it after a while and in the end both of you quite liked it.



Look at this portrait Daddy took of you lying on Erato's arm:

Photos from fourth week of life...

Here you are in the dining room - which will soon enough be your bedroom!


Here you are sleeping on the sofa.



Here you are on the bed with Daddy... he was reading to you from your book again, earlier. You are now four weeks old in these photos!


Silly little-one, there's no food in Mummy's nose for you!


Here you are all happy and set for your trip into town to go shopping! Mummy and Daddy took you to Zara and Notos Galleries at Omonoia and you had all sorts of new sights and sounds to enjoy! Everyone was looking at us and saying how small you are and they let us jump the queue to pay. It was really quite funny to see everyone's reactions to having you with us in the sling.




Daddy took this photo because he likes the way your feet and hands look when you are in the sling. on the way back from the shopping trip, we went all together all three of us to the supermarket to get some new nappies.

Granny M's birthday

It was granny M's birthday at the weekend, and we all went to Auntie Igor's house on Monday to celebrate.


Daddy dressed you, but he's a little funny sometimes and he put your nice outfit on you back to front, so the nice collar that should have been on the front got turned round to the back!




Here you are with Granny M and Aunty Igor. It was your first time to a different house and you rose to the challenge quite well indeed!



Here you are with Granny M out on the balcony of the house...

Hymettus II: The hill of the archangels...

Hello little one... Saturday is Hymettus day!

On Saturday morning, Kelly came to visit and held you a little, but she did not come with us to the mountain.



Saturday is exploration day and exploration means we go out into the verdant rolling foothills of Hymettus with you in the sling. We took Ismini with us and drove up to the Monastery of Kaisariani. It's all a little tense as there are some people who want to make more roads and tunnels through the mountain and there are others who want to stop them, so there is no way of knowing whether all the nice woods we walked through will still be in the same condition when you are old enough to tell us the differences between the Black pines and the Halepensis pines which the Friends of the Hymettus woods had so thoughtfully labeled for us.


Here you are in your sling...

You are beginning to smile more and more often, although you are not doing it consciously as a response to a stimulus.



In the end we walked up to the Analipsis Church and then walked down the botanical footpath which led us to the Hill of the Archangels, which we had first visited with Mummy the day before you were born. Ismini took some nice photographs of all of us together in both places - our first ones where all three of us are visible since the maternity hospital!


With Mummy and Daddy at the Church of the Analipsis - can you see the icons in the gloomy inside of the church?






Mummy and Ismini in front of the ruins of St. Mark of the Frankish Monastery. Daddy can't wait to tell you about the Franks and the all the groovy medieval stuff that happened. Daddy grew up amongst the Franks (in the broadest meaning of the word) and thinks he is well placed to "understand" western christianity.



This is a spolion! Daddy goes crazy for this sort of thing. It's a piece of ancient building block that has been reused in later times. The buildings on the hill of the archangels are full of spolia.





Here we are all three of us in front of the church of the Archangels which is still in serviceable state. You can see the old sculpture in low relief showing a bull to Daddy's left...

We stayed up on the Hill of the Archangels for a while and looked out as the sun got low in the sky and reflected off a myriad of solar water heaters making the city look almost beautiful in its concrete architectural cereal box splendour. While we were there we saw some partridges walking around and feeding. Daddy got very excited and took you up close to look at them, but you did not wake up. In fact, you spent the whole trip quite comfortably sleeping. It's ok to get your rest - you have a whole life ahead of you to see partridges.



Here is one of the Partridges we saw - just in case they are all gone by the time you are big enough to tell them apart from other birds...