5 kids, 3 dogs & 2 sisters

All under one roof. For four days.

N. left for a business trip on Sunday and I decided to pack my things and leave home to stay for a few days at sis’s place. Yes, I took the kids & Benny with me. It’s not like it was optional anyway.

We had ONE obstacle to overcome which gave us a lot of worry and stress on the first day but it worked out great in the end after all. You see, Pluto & Micky (my sister’s dogs) are not the friendliest dogs on the planet and you know how they say: two’s company, three’s a crowd? Well…something like that.

Both men in our life were extremely skeptical and didn’t agree with bringing them together. I won’t lie. At the end of the first day I was ready to return home. Pluto and Micky seemed more eager to massacre Benny than play nicely with him and If we hadn’t been extremely careful it would have probably ended with a scene taken from a splatter dog movie.

Day 2 was dog promising but not children promising. All 5 of them hadn’t gotten the sleep they needed and each one had a different variation of cranky. I looked at Alex and Alex looked at me with desperation. Had we thought this through? Was our romantic idea of living together unrealistic??

It wasn’t. You see the great thing with us taking care of all kids is that when one of us overdoses on our own, we are more than willing to take on the other kids. Alex decided to relive the young children’s troubles and took over Iliana & Yiannis and I helped with the homework of Elena (8) & Angelina (10). Emmanouela (12) was kind enough to shed some light on what a mom has to go through when her child hits the teenage years. Oh boy.

It wasn’t easy. The only reason we made it sane through the days is that we were motivated to watch a movie while munching on our junk food every night. And we managed to have all 5 of them in bed by 8pm. Quite an accomplishment don’t you think?

We are back home now and although we are glad that we have the dad and hubby N. with us again we all seem to miss Alex and her bunch.

Until next time

love,

tatu

 

the embarrassing call

Did you ever find yourself in a situation where you had to make an embarassing phonecall?

I just did.

I called my son’s school to let them know that I had accidentaly given him the dog’s rice for lunch. I know. It doesn’t just sound bad, it actually is quite BAD. Considering the rice was on the verge of not being edible anymore (dog edible that is).

Let me explain myself.

I love my son. This was not deliberate. Now…how can someone do such a mistake? Easy. There were 2 identical tupperware in the fridge. One light blue & one turquoise. Let’s pretend my sister never mentioned that I should be careful not to switch the basmati rice with the smelly rice when I was left to take care of yesterday night’s dinner for the kids (which I totally rocked by the way).

This morning was a different story.

I was sleep deprived. Yes, I know what you will say. Cheap excuse. Well…I guess it’s the new mid 30′s mommas lame excuse. Like an equivalent of the early 20′s booze excuse. Sorry honey, I didn’t mean to sleep around, I was too drunk.

Now it sounds more like:

Sorry honey, I didn’t mean to poison you, I was just too tired to think straight.

And for the purpose of not making a total fool of myself let’s pretend that there wasn’t a sign that something was off with the rice when I found a teeny tiny little fracture of a chicken bone in it.

Until next time

love,

tatu

a week in words – Pelion

First things first:

Leaving the house for a week WITH the kids is not considered a vacation. Period. You wanna know why? Vacation = Relaxation. Vacation with young kids = Stressful Relaxation.

Don’t get me wrong. I love going away. Especially if the company is great (my sister,  my nieces and a few close friends), the setting is beautiful and the weather is perfect.

Easter happened to fall late this year and we decided to spend a week in beautiful Pelion.

I realize that we are extremely lucky in having a place to go to whenever we are in need of change of scenery. Especially in times like these when vacationing in hotels is less financially feasible anymore.

We left last Saturday.

No 1 note to self: Packing the day before is of vital importance if you do not wish to lose half of your day packing, closing the house, feeding the animals that stay behind etc.

After a very stressful morning we put the already agitated kids and the dog who hates car rides in the car. I don’t know if I have ever mentioned to you N.’s talent in utilizing the car space available to the max. If anyone saw how packed we were he might have thought we were going on a 3 month trip, not on a 7 day trip.

The trip which took us in our previous lives 3 1/2 hours, now has extended to 5 horribly slow passing torturous hours in the car.

No 2 note to self: Invest in car seat entertainment to avoid car fights between siblings.

After what seemed to be an endless road trip we arrived in Volos at the supermarket where N. had a similar meltdown with Steve Martin in the Father of the Bride only it didn’t involve hot dog buns, it involved 2 bottles of shampoo.

The first day was perfect. All 5 kids were super excited, even Benny seemed to enjoy his newly found paradise. The weather was wonderfully warm so we decided to head to the beach.

The ride to the beach is long (50 minutes) and full of turns and at times you feel like you are on a roller-coaster. If you manage to get past this and not throw up your entire breakfast you are in for a treat. The scenery is beautiful, the weather is slightly chilly and when you start driving down the mountain and getting closer to the beach the excitement reaches its peak.

Needless to say all children defied the icy cold water temperature and swam and swam and then swam some more.

Now THAT was a relaxing day at the beach. I admit it. Maybe the only couple of hours of the whole 7 day trip but it made it all worthwhile.

The next two days flew by as we were all enjoying ourselves. When Alex and the kids left things started going downhill. Ok, I am exaggerating of course but you know how it is when you have the perfect setting to begin with and then you suddenly lose it?

No 3 note to self: Don’t start the ‘vacation’ with the perfect company, END IT.

I won’t bore you with the details I will just mention the few things that interfered with the otherwise perfect (??) week away.

As always with no merciful exceptions whatsoever, I was sleep deprived and I don’t know about you but when I lack the sleep I need I tend to get cranky and dwell on certain things that would otherwise do not mean that the world has come to an end. Let me share a few examples

• On day 4 the oven broke down. For me, the semi planning freak it rocked my cooking world. I soon came to terms with it and tried to find alternative ways of cooking.

• Benny decided to roll himself in unidentified (obviously) poo a few times which made me use up the one bottle of shampoo (you see, I knew we would find the perfect use for it) and lose my temper and swear IN FRONT OF THE KIDS. Yes, I went down that road.
• N.’ the builder’ (that is a different story and totally worth a whole post dedicated to his talent of almost being able to fix everything) spent half of the week fixing things instead of relaxing and enjoying his kids.
• On our last night (it was after the event I will describe that we decided the time had come to return home) a little gecko decided to commit suicide and get burned inside the electrical service panel causing the entire upper floor to go dark 20 minutes before losing the natural light of the day. SPLENDID. Especially when dealing with an almost 6-year-old who gets a meltdown for not getting his much promised spaghetti.

Apart from the few setbacks we managed to spend some quality time with our friends and enjoyed the Greek lamb after all.

All in all it was wonderfully challenging, much like everyday life with my kids.

Now, a few days later, I am still trying to recover from our ‘vacation’. As we always say with N.:

We have returned home to rest.

Until next time

love,

tatu

a week in pictures – Pelion

We are back!

Due to lack of time (and energy) I will just share a few pics of the lovely (?) week we spent away.

riding in the car…not his thing

 

early morning visitor!

 

luscious green

 

it can’t get better than this

 

banana??seriously??

 

the lovely Angelina

 

tree climbing never gets old

 

As soon as I recover from my week away I will tell you all about it. I am still trying to find a word which would best describe a week away from home with the kids because one thing is for sure VACATION is NOT it.

Until next time

love,

tatu

quality time

It’s Easter week here and we have been taking some time off.

As much as I enjoy the blogging world it feels good NOT to have the Internet option so I can spend some true quality time with my family and friends.

I hope you are all well. Consider yourselves missed!

Until next time

Love,

tatu

a surgery and a concert

After a very sleepless night full of nightmares of how Yianni forced fed Iliana a bottle of milk (I blame everything on the anesthesiologist who called me the evening before to make sure Iliana arrives at the hospital on an empty stomach) I woke up in a pretty messed up state.

Stressed is an understatement.

I had 40 minutes to wake both children up, help them get dressed, have the breakfast argument with Yianni on what he wants to eat, convince Iliana that it’s for her own good NOT to have the bottle of milk she was desperate to inhale, get dressed myself, put both kids in the car and drive off (while having to listen to Yianni tell his sister how SHE COULD NOT DRINK ANYTHING, NOT EVEN WATER for a minimum of 15 times-when I tried to explain that I didn’t like him rubbing it in her face, he wore his innocent smile and told me that he just wanted to make sure she understood – yeah right).

We dropped Yianni off at school and arrived at the hospital.  I don’t think  Iliana had actually realized what she was going to go through. The first alarm bell rang when the chief nurse took her blood. You see I had shared with her the absolute necessary: ‘Honey you are not breathing right, you are neither eating nor sleeping properly and the nice doctor will operate you (I am positive she didn’t fully comprehend this word and I didn’t make an effort to really explain what it means) while you are sleeping’.

The moment she actually freaked out was when the two paramedics came with the stretcher to take her into surgery. I undressed her and wore her the cutest (and saddest) small surgical gown. I convinced the paramedics that I would carry her into surgery instead of forcing her to lay on the stretcher and we headed to the 1st floor.

A few minutes later I held her tight and watched her fade away in 3 seconds. No matter how minor a surgery is, when you see your child put to sleep under general anesthesia, shivers go through your whole body. I thought I would be prepared. After all, I have been there 3 times already with Yiannis. I am familiar with this. Or so I thought. I was wrong. It scares the hell out of me EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I was asked to sit in the waiting room. The TV was on and I watched as the hospital ads repeated themselves over what seemed to me the longest 40 minutes of my life. When I heard the announcement that the surgery was over I ran (run, Forrest, run) to the e.r. where I was greeted by the surgeon with a smile on his face. ‘Everything went fine’ he said.

Relief is one of the greatest most underestimated feelings one can experience.

As I patiently waited by her side for her to wake up I felt gratitude. Gratitude for my healthy kids, gratitude for my husband who still has a good job in a country which has amongst the highest unemployment rates in Europe at the moment, gratitude for a roof above our head, gratitude for A GOOD LIFE.

I held her in my arms as we went up to her room. The paramedic that escorted us told me to make sure I held her head as she was still pretty much dazed and confused from the anesthetic…..Last time I made sure that I held her head was 3 years ago when she was still a tiny baby.  TIME FLIES.

A while later my dad walked in. From the detrimental look on his face I realised how difficult it must be for the grandparents to watch their grandchildren suffer like this. We have a saying here in Greece: το παιδί του παιδιού μου είναι 2 φορές παιδί μου (the child of my child is twice my child – again it sounds soooooo much better in Greek).

quality time

The hours passed by slowly but I didn’t mind. I had my mom to keep me company and stay with Iliana as I ran around the hospital to settle the paperwork & insurance claim.

All in all she was a good patient. What bothered her the most was the IV in her arm which she managed to pull out herself causing a minor blood bath (for a moment there I thought I was in the set of the next splatter movie). A few doctors visits and numerous hours later we finally left the hospital to head home.

I gave Iliana her medication, got her ready for bed, tucked her in and left Yiannis with my mother in law and N. My head was pounding, I felt too tired to even move, let alone drive but I had promised my niece, Angelina, that I would do my best to attend her music school’s spring concert. I pulled myself together and drove off.

The next two hours passed like a breeze. It was the perfect end to a very stressful day. It was the proper way to celebrate my birthday. I watched my sister trying to convince her daughter to swallow her chewing gum while singing on stage, my niece almost choking while trying, the girl in the 2nd row who is the next Shakira (or so she thinks) and some meanly talented kids. MUSIC ROCKS!

Until next time

love,

tatu

birthday overrated??

I am usually super excited about my birthday. My mom always made THE BIGGEST DEAL out of it. The day started with my breakfast plate being surrounded by handpicked flowers (you get the picture). She always made me feel like Christmas on an April day.

Then I met N.

N. never got the proper birthday treatment as his special day is in September which coincided with the end of summer/back to school days. Furthermore, his younger brother was born two days (and two years later) so my mother in law thought it would be more convenient to celebrate once, on the day between the two birthdays.

Up to this day I am not quite sure which is better. No wait. That is a lie. I am sure the way to go is to celebrate your birthday to THE MAX! Unless your birthday falls on the same day your daughter is undergoing surgery and you will have to and I quote my son Yiannis: ‘celebrate on another day’.

Iliana is scheduled for an adenotomy tomorrow morning. Nothing major. She just needs to be able to breathe right again, resume eating and sleeping properly and stop snoring like a train (bless her).

I will still celebrate tomorrow. I will celebrate my daughter coming out of surgery.

Until next time

love,

tatu

what are you? 3?

While I was desperately trying to find THE MANUAL on how to be THE PERFECT PARENT (spoiler: there is none) I swallowed a few dozens of parenting books. Some I loved, others I breezed through and a few didn’t appeal to me after all and were left unread on the shelf.

What I realized after reading all these books was one thing: Too much information can be as harmful as too little information. The key is ΠΑΝ ΜΕΤΡΟΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΟΝ (pan metron ariston=moderation is the key).

What I have done in the last couple of years is reread some chapters of the books that I found helpful and keep in mind little gems and treasures I find on the way.

One of these treasures was a phrase an author suggested we should tell ourselves each time we forget that we are dealing with a child. The deeper meaning was that we tend to get carried away and expect way too much from the little person we have in front of us.

Let me give you an example.

Iliana asked me yesterday to play hide and seek. In the effort of spending more quality time with my kids I decided to drop everything I was doing and play along. If Iliana asks, you usually obey since she is the sweetest, most sunshine-y little girl on this planet (objectively speaking of course).

What I had forgotten was that she hadn’t really grasped the concept of the game. Yiannis absolutely loves to play hide and seek and usually finds it extremely entertaining to scare the hell out of her whenever he hides and suddenly reappears (accompanied by a shriek voice and frightening face while pretending to be a lion). So the whole concept of hide and seek is a bit distorted in her little 3 year old mind.

Iliana: Mama, count to three and I will hide under the couch

Me: Honey, you are not supposed to tell me where you hide, I will count to ten and you will hide wherever you want, ok?

Iliana: Ok mama, I will hide under the couch and you will then count to 3.

Me: The whole purpose of this game is that you hide without telling me where you are and I will try to find you ok? don’t tell me WHERE you hide, ok?

Iliana: Ok mama. I will hide first and then you count to 3. She didn’t seem like grasping it but I decided to play along, anyway.

Me: 1……2…….3…….I am coming….

Iliana: Ok mama, I am behind the curtain!

I rest my case…

Until next time

love,

tatu

even if she hadn’t told me, her ‘kiki’ kind of spoiled her hideaway

 

growing beyond me

It is my pleasure to introduce you to one of my favorite blogger friends, Larry from me myself and kids. He is a high school English Teacher, Free-lance writer, tutor, father of two children, sports enthusiast and a blogger since the Summer of 2011.

I have been stalking following him for a while now and I am always amazed of his ability to perfectly put his thoughts into writing.

Enjoy Larry’s wonderful insight on bath time with the young ones:

-

It was Friday afternoon. My wife was harried as she was working from home while trying to prepare for the oncoming Sabbath.

Being the wonderful husband that I am, I asked how I could help. “You get the children bathed,” she instructed as if a quarterback barking orders to the rest of the team. “Anything else,” I inquired. I told you I was a wonderful husband. Anyway, the quarterback had no more instructions.

She did not realize she had given me the easiest job.

Some of you may be scratching your heads and thinking, “Easy? This one crazy dad.” You are conjuring up images of children who loathe the bath. They need a countdown, a staredown, and ultimately a rundown to get them into the tub. Then, when they are in the tub, they splash around like a fish who is out of water. When it comes time to actually wash them, they are furious for the interruption to their playtime. By the time, you get them out of the tub and brush their hair – another battle, you are sweating, tired, and trying to figure out who got the most wet – you, the floor, or your child.

Well, actually, I am completely sane.  You see there were times when the scene I described above occurred. As I was cleaning up the bath, I was left wondering just how often I really needed to bathe the children. Would once a month be enough?

I am here to tell you that those days have passed my friends. And it is now smooth goings.  My children don’t require the countdown. In fact, they often go into the bath themselves and seem to find the bath relaxing. They wash themselves (well, they claim to and they don’t smell, so I am inclined to believe them) and get themselves dressed after getting out of the bath. By the way, they seem to think underwear is optional, but that’s another story. Okay, the bathroom is still a mess when they are done but cleaning it up is much easier and less unpleasant when you don’t have to go through a bath experience like the one noted above.

Now, I have to make a confession. You know how you are excited for your child to move forward in his/her development? You think to yourself, “I can’t wait till I don’t have to burp or feed or diaper or carry etc.” Then suddenly, the child is past the stage. You are happy for the child and for the easing of the burden of rearing your children. Yet, part of you misses it. Part of you feels nostalgia and sighs and sees a glimpse of the child growing up and needing you less and less.

I feel it too. So, I offer my children assistance, “you okay in there?, you need any help?, you want me to sit in here and wait for you?”. Normally, it’s a negative. So, I move on feeling both happy and sad. My boys are growing up and my days as a father to small children is nearing an end.

Well, I have done my job on the busy Friday afternoon. The boys are bathed – with little thanks to me. I wonder what they will need from me next.

Larry D. Bernstein

Blog:        memyselfandkids.com

Website:  larrydbernstein.com

let me share some wisdom

Not mine obviously. The one I got from the workshop I attended on conflict resolution at Yiannis’s school two days ago.

But first some events of the last few weeks which seem very relevant to the above.

About a month ago Yiannis came home from school with a party invitation. He is the cutest, proudest and most schmusable(my word, comes from the German word ‘schmusen’=cuddle) little guy when it comes to announcing that he has been invited to a party. You see, one day at the beginning of the year, he came home from school and told me that he had heard in class that the other kids were going to a friend’s party and he told me that he wanted to go as well. I opened his bag and searched for the invitation only to realize that there was none. My heart broke while I tried to explain to him that he had not been invited. The concept was too hard to grasp and he begged me to call the mom and ask her if we could go. I didn’t.

Ever since that incident I make a bit deal out of every invite that goes into his bag. And we made a pact with N. that we would try very hard NOT to miss any party chance there is. Even if it means that we would travel to the end of the world and put ALL our plans on hold.

A few days after the invite, my friend N.K. called and suggested we should reschedule the trip we had canceled a few weeks back due to bad weather and ill children. While we were trying to find a suitable weekend for all, the only available seemed to be the one were Yiannis had his invite. At first we declined N.K.’s offer to spend a WHOLE weekend away but when sense came back to us I decided to ask my son what he preferred in the hope that he might choose wisely. I want to go to the party. No surprise there.

After some blackmailing convincing I did on my part he changed his mind and preferred the and I quote ferry ride, goats, sheep, pigs, friends to play with a whole weekend vs a few hours, eating out, taking Benny along. Do you see where I am getting at??

A day before our trip I got an sms from the mom who was hosting the party informing us that her daughter got sick and the party will be postponed until the following Saturday. Great news, I mean awful news for the mom & the kid but WIN WIN for us, we would spend a great weekend away and Yiannis would still go to his party.  The only catch was that it was rescheduled for the Saturday N. & myself had both signed up to attend a workshop at Yiannis’s school. It was then decided that N. would bring the kids to the party & I would participate in the workshop.

The kids had a blast and I attended a great workshop. The topic was: conflict resolution within ourselves. The purpose was to work on ourselves, find all our inner voices (thank God there are others with inner voices), identify them, find the chief voice which will rule out all other (according to circumstances & priorities) and accept that YOU CAN’T DO IT ALL! How wonderful to be reminded. YOU simply CAN NOT DO IT ALL.

Until next time

love,

tatu