Well, here you are, in your car seat, sleeping like a baby. When Daddy came back from the office on Sunday, he took you and Mummy and put you both in the car and took you to the picnic site on Hymettus mountain above the Kaisariani Monastery. It's where Mummy celebrated her birthday two years ago with all her friends and where Mummy and Daddy had gone for their big walk the day before you were born. Mummy and Daddy like this area because it is easy to get to and still very far from the noise and the bustle of Athens and you can almost believe that you are in nature.
Daddy took you in the sling and Mummy was carrying the gear in the changing bag that Auntie Yiota had bought for you. She got it specially so that you could take part in Mummy and Daddy's adventures.
This is Daddy at the picnic area with you in the sling, fast asleep. Mummy and Daddy were a little upset that you were sleeping as you would be missing all the beautiful things that nature has to offer. Of course since you can't focus further than your outstretched hand, this would be confined to tree silhouettes and smells.... this place offers plenty of both!
Here is a closer picture of you and Daddy. You are still sleeping. In the end you woke up and started making noise because you wanted to be fed. Mummy hadn't tried to feed you out of doors yet so it was a big adventure for everyone to organise the logistics of feeding you outside. Although we had watched the video from Norway where everyone feeds their babies at every opportunity, things in Greece are a little more traditional and you don't often see mothers in the streets because they do not want to be seen feeding their babies in public.
In the end it all worked out quite well. Can you see your little legs sticking out of the sheet? Mummy is holding her hand just like Isis in the representations of her with Horus. Can you tell why? I don't think she's doing it to mimic the paintings and carvings, so there must be some other reason…
After you ate, you did a whole lot of smelly poo, almost immediately, so we moved onto our next first-time adventure: changing your nappy outside the house. Mummy was very organised thanks to the changing bag and our pretty good planning. We had everything we needed with us in the changing bag.
After you were in the new nappy, after you realised you had been well fed and after waking up pretty well, you realised that you were not at home any more. This is where the fun started. The more you looked around, the more strange everything seemed to you. There was bright blue sky broken by dark tree-branches, rather than the cheap but arguably tasteful IKEA ceiling light fittings you were used to. The horizon, a new concept was _there_ all around you, not walls or windows looking onto the next-door building. All this was an amazing plethora of information to process, but you were loving it.
Then to cap it all, Mummy went and got some chamomile and put it to your nose. Wow! New smells as well! This was an amazing trip for you.
Here you are, with a very happy Mummy. You are on your changing mat and still looking in awe in all directions!
On the way back to the car, you sat with Daddy at the spring by the Monastery at Kaisariani. Daddy wants to take photos there with you all the time to make a sort of chart of your growth. I guess it'll be OK until you get to 11 years old. At that point, you'll tell Daddy to stuff his spring and go get a tattoo and a piercing. The things Daddy has to look forward to!
When you finally got back to the car you sat and stared out of the window almost all the way home when you started crying. Either you wanted to go back up the mountain, or you had overloaded your memory with all the new experiences and were trying to put yourself to sleep so you could process them.
In all a very good day and one from which both Mummy and Daddy took a lot of courage for more excursions of a longer duration.
