A Matter of Choice

Dear Leonidas, Today is your 4th birthday, I told you we'd get there eventually after all those weeks of counting down the days!  I know this has seemed such a long time coming for you as your friends have been four for ages now and you have been asking me for so long when it would be your birthday. You are so very grown up now, going to school every day and even sometimes even saying goodbye to me at the gate and going in on your own. We are all very proud of how well you are doing at school, speaking Greek all the time and getting on so well with the other children. You love playing with your friends, and on the whole you all get on very well.  You love to go out, whether it is to the park, beach or pool or visiting Daddy at his shop. You have learnt so much in the past year, you can read brilliantly and there's no stopping you when it comes to picking up more information. Your latest love is playing on the Wii and it amazes me how fast you have learnt how to do ...

Name days are not something I had heard of before moving to Cyprus but as I love any excuse to celebrate I thought it best to try and embrace the local tradition! The custom originated with the Greek Orthodox calendar of Saints and people named after a particular saint would celebrate on that day. Traditionally children will celebrate both their birthday and name day equally, with some differences but as they get older they tend to just focus on one.   (according to Wikipedia anyway!)   In previous years Leo has had no idea of it being his name day as he was too young too understand, even birthdays were not really understood, but this year I knew he would appreciate it more. At school he often receives a small chocolate or sweet from various children as they take them to hand out on their respective days.   Leo was very excited to take in a bag of mini chocolate bars to hand out to his teachers and friends, and even more pleased ...

Happy 'half birthday'!   You are 3 and half years old today! It's been a very strange 6 months for you since you turned three . Daddy has been at work for the whole summer so it was just you and me at home but then in August your baby brother Louka arrived , you've adjusted very well to our family's new addition and most of the time you are a very good helper. You were a bit bemused at first that Louka didn't do anything but now he's three months old you love to make him smile and show him how to play with his toys.  You don't seem to notice as much when he is 'making a racket' either! In the last six months you started school, first at your 'little school'   in June and more recently to your ' Big school' in September .  We are so proud of how well you are getting on at your new school and glad you like it so much more than the little school,  You have lots of friends and although you usually 'don't know' ...

Slightly confused by a pair of gloves!   For other Project 52's and 366 entries head over to The Boy and Me's  weekly link up.        

You can read the first part here.. Leo was due on May 16th 2009, for some reason I was convinced he would be on time if not early. as we don't do late!  It turned out he was quite happy where he was and was waiting until the last moment,  I was booked to be induced on the evening of the 28th, in fact by then I was having mild contractions so on arrival at the hospital after monitoring me for a short time they broke my waters just before midnight.  Now looking back most of the night is a bit of a blur and I look back and think it was not THAT bad - I think this is some clever trick or nature though designed not to put you off having more than one!  After my waters were broken we moved to the delivery suite, Aaron nipped out for a cigarette and I can remember being stood bent over the back of a chair thinking' Oh bugger, this actually quite hurts!'   I can't really remember time scales but after a while I asked for gas and air, I thought it wasn't w...

Yesterday I joined in with Tara's Gallery , and said how I'd never blogged about Leo's birth. As I started to give it some thought and begin to write I realised I could never fit it into one (or two!) posts.... so to stop your bums going numb or your laptop batteries dying here goes with the first instalment and a bit of the conversations that led up to it. Many years ago way before we were even thinking we'd be together long term, let alone get married and think about babies Aaron and I were having a conversation about births and he said there was NO way he would be present at the birth of his child. I was a bit taken aback by this as I thought most Dads these days probably would be but I didn't think too much about it, I was only 19 after all and babies were not yet on my mind. As my pregnancy progressed we discussed it, or more accurately I mentioned it and was met with the same answer - no way was he going to be in the room.  Being pregnant and hormon...

Considering the amount of time I spend online, reading different blogs or randomly wasting time it does come as a surprise to me that I have never got round to writing Leo's 'birth story'.  I suppose as time went on it seemed a bit late and then when he was 5 months old we emigrated and it kind of distracted me! This week's Gallery theme is Birth,   and reading the many other birth stories and lovely photos entered into it prompted me to think about writing my own. It was, I think a reasonably straight forward birth but in writing it I had to think about more than just the actual birth. I've not blogged about it before as Aaron and I had different thoughts on what we wanted - me being the pregnant one ended up getting my own way and I think I maybe still feel bad about it! I've never blogged about my birth story but feel that it is something that should be in this ongoing record of mine so have started giving it some thought. I had no det...

A couple of weeks ago for Flashback Friday  I was looking back to our days spent messing about on the canal. Although my favourite times were in the pre baby, drinking all night days we had a surprisingly good 10 days aboard with a 5 month old Leo for his very first holiday. I was a little worried about how we would get on, especially as there were usually at least 3 of us on board making it much easier to work the locks, I was concerned about reaching a lock at feed time and if would would be able to cope with just the two of us.  It turned out to be just fine, in fact it was very good for us and him as he slept through the night for the first time ( and carried on when we got home) and was left to his own devices a little more than usual where we were so busy. It was going so well... This was the first and only time we used Leo's baby carrier, aside the fact that I had a bad back and Aaron has a dodgy shoulder and Leo has always been heavy just after this photo was ...

Reading the letters on his banner! It was Leo's 2nd Birthday this weekend and we had a great couple of days... Saturday afternoon saw 7 of his friends (plus parents) arriving for a 'Mickey Mouse' themed party, Greeting on our front door for the party! I LOVE parties, both organising and having them. In the run up to the party I made special birthday cookies  and had great fun preparing all the food. I had brought a 'toodles' shape cutter and made cheese and marmite bites with them, as well as cutting ham into Toodles shapes as well. Along with plenty of other goodies and a brilliant cake decorated by Aaron we were all set. I loved the fact he knew what was happening this year, last week we went to a friends party and he had talked about it every single day since. I was being greeted each morning with the question "Jack's party again?' so we kept saying "No, Jack's party's all gone, it's Leo's party next'  He sp...

Dear Leonidas, Happy birthday little man, you are two years old today! Time seems to have flown by since I wrote to you on your first birthday , You have changed so much in the last year I'm starting to have trouble keeping up! Who'd have thought it possible that you are now more cute than ever, and very clever with it.  You now repeat everything we say, which is brilliant but not always a good thing, as sometimes we have to speak in code to talk about what we are doing later so you don't insist on it immediately. Daddy and I are very proud and amazed at how well you know your colours, numbers and alphabet, and now you even know your numbers in Greek.  It's great to hear you read out every letter and number you see as we go about our day.  Your favourite toys at the moment are your ride on turtle which you 'high five' and kiss goodnight. You love cars and spend ages 'driving' them up and down anything you can find. Like your Mum and Dad you also lo...

This time 2 years ago I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of our little man, he was already late but finally made his appearance on Friday 29th May at 11am. I had been told to call the hospital at 9pm on the Thursday evening to see if they had a bed for me to go and be induced. I had been having some pains on and off all day so they told me to go in at 10.30pm. I'm not going to write my 'birth story' for a couple of reasons, one it's all a bit hazy now and two I don't wish to traumatise Aaron again by making him read it!  Compared to many it was a problem free birth (assisted with ventouse and I had a few stitches but nothing to get all dramatic about) but Aaron bless him had really not wanted to be present at the birth and he was pretty much forced into it by his rather emotional/hormonal pregnant wife! I'm so glad and so proud that he did against all his wishes stay with me for the whole thing, I don't think I could have done it without h...

On Thursday I took Leo to his first ever Easter Egg hunt, it was arranged by my good friend Sam who like myself loves a good excuse for a party - it was at her house we went to our first Halloween party too. She wisely decided not to have the kids hunt for chocolate eggs - as all of the kids with the exception of one are only 2 we thought they might not quite understand the idea and we could be just setting ourselves up for some tears and tantrums! (also we thought chocolate would melt but it turns out the UK had all the nice weather and we only just missed the rain!) Instead each child had one painted egg to find and then were given some stickers to decorate it. Cypriots dye their eggs red so we followed suit and had red ones too. (Symbolizes the blood of Christ)  It also handily meant that they were all the same colour so they all had the same :) Although they didn't hunt for chocolate eggs don't worry they didn't miss out on their sugar overload, we all took...

A few weeks ago I posted two similar photos as part of Cafe Bebe's Flashback Friday link up. This week I decided to even things up a little... This is my hubby at 6 weeks old. People often tell me now that Leo looks very much like AJ, I usually smile and nod as I just think he looks like Leo! I've never been very good it seems at working out which parent a baby most resembles, when asked who a baby looks like my standard response is 'He looks like a baby!'

Here in Cyprus they like nothing more to have a reason to celebrate and if all the bank holidays were not enough you also get to celebrate your Name day, which is the day of the Saint you are named after (which most are, if you don't have your own name day you celebrate on All Saints Day so all is not lost!) It is a big day for Cypriots with feasting and visiting of family and friends, although children will celebrate birthdays and name days almost equally, as you become an adult the focus shifts towards a celebration on the name day with birthdays being a smaller personal event. Last Friday was the Name day for Leonidas, Our Leonidas received this lovely handmade card from Nana and in the afternoon we went to our friend's house for a tea party for the kiddies. It was a joint Name day celebration as one of my friends also has a little boy called Leonidas, and as if that wasn't coincidence enough they were born only 3 days apart! I spent quite a while trying ...

On Sunday after a lovely long lie-in (Thank you AJ xx) I got up and was presented with a cup of tea, lovely big breakfast (and it was slimming world friendly, so even better) and then Leo lovingly presented me with this...(well after I chased him around a little as he didn't really want to give something up which had just been handed to him!) It's my first ever Mothers Day card, yay! (yes, it is actually my 2nd Mothers Day but Leo couldn't talk last year and couldn't ask his Daddy to do anything about it) I've been a Mother for almost 2 years now, and although it only seems five minutes ago that we brought him home  I can't properly remember a time without him.   oh, hang on wait - that was when I went out drinking, slept till 11am and then spent the day on the sofa watching Top Gear re-runs, when I could have a conversation on the phone without someone hanging on my leg crying for 'bebums' (that's raisins to you and me!) and when I could stay u...

Pat, Pat, Pat...PAT    These are the words I am greeted with every day at the moment! I never thought I'd be trying to persuade Leo to watch The Wiggles after how many times we watched it last year but it turns out it is less annoying than Postman Pat over and over again! Leo has become  Postman Pat's biggest ever fan, it's the first thing he says every morning and the last thing he says at night, last night he even said it in his sleep! I thought we had it bad with The Wiggles but didn't realise how much worse it would get when he learnt to talk, he used to 'ask' for The Wiggles but I suppose it was more me putting it on to keep him happy while I blogged cleaned :) On the upside it just so happens that the DVD we have is 'Postman Pat's ABC and 123' and due to the sheer number of times we have watched it Leo now knows his numbers 1 to 10, and can say nearly all of the words which represent the alphabet on it, so at least it is pr...

Yesterday I offered the following beverage options to Leo.... This is what happened next..... He cried like his heart was breaking, and looked at me like I was the most evil mother a boy could have! I was trying to see which he would choose - he could have milk but in a cup (have tried this before with various types of cups and beakers) or if it was the bottle he wanted he could have it with water in it. I thought it more than fair, but he wanted milk, and it HAD to be in a bottle. Last year Leo drank milk at milk times and water throughout the day, during the summer especially he drank lots and lots of it, and sometimes 2 whole bottles of it in the night. I didn't offer him squash for ages and when I did one day for no apparent reason he refused it and carried on drinking water quite happily. He only drank from a bottle, a fact I didn't even think about as I was too busy being pleased about the water, and it was 40 degrees so he could have been drinking from a bucket ...

This weeks Gallery was a no-brainer for me. The prompt is Shapes and the first thing that popped into my head was the shape I am asked to draw a million times a day. Leo loves to draw, often he will ask for his crayons as I lift him from his cot in the morning. Because of this I spend a lot of time 'drawing' with him, the problem being is that I can never think of anything to draw, so I started drawing shapes. For some reason best known to him, he has taken rather a liking to circles, or as he calls them 'kerkels' He will sit and watch for ages while you draw them all over the place, and recently has got rather good at doing them himself....... He also likes to see you draw 'dars' (stars) and 'a-angles', (triangles) but hasn't yet mastered these ones himself.  Such is his love of shapes (and my lack of imagination at drawing) we are now moving onto numbers which I can manage to make look like they are supposed to unlike when I try to dr...