"opa!" - greek festival 2009

we went to the greek festival again this year. once again, it was a fantastic time. and once again, it was hotter than hades. and once again, the food was a-maze-ing. apparently they had to cancel the festival on sunday because i ate all of the food. i'm only half kidding (festival was apparently cancelled on sunday, but there was at least one other pregnant person, my friend alexis, who reports she also ate plenty as well). this year, jack and charlie and "jen jen" (party of 5!) came with us and we've decided that this may well be an annual tradition. this year, hana also got into saying "opa" and repeated it everytime she heard someone call it out (like when they lit the flaming cheese - de-licious!).

for those that don't know, the greek festival in oakland is thrown at the greek orthodox church and is part of their easter celebration. we visited their chapel and it's pretty amazing. we did not get a good picture, but it's hard not to be impressed by the inside of the structure. you can see glimpses of the exterior of the dome in many of these shots. traditionally, the exterior is pretty simple (symbolizing our earthly existence) and the interior is pretty ornate (symbolizing your heavenly existence). i was pretty impressed by the exterior so, you can imagine how blown away i was by the inside... neato!

after the chapel, and a lap around the festival, we hit the bounce house - not so greek, but the ya just can't go wrong with the bounce house. i think that's like an internationally accepted truth.

here, charlie is requiring a little coaxing before going in. jenny eventually had to get in with her.


after the bounce house, and some loukemides (honey dipped fried dough thingies... can't go wrong with that), we hit the play ground. hana pretty much stuck to that sing thing you see in the top picture (and video below), but jack and charlie were more adventerous, exploring the entire play structure.

this video captures to most fun part of the day in my opinion. it starts with the kids on the play ground, but you can hear the music in the background. the kids seemed really interested in the music so after the bounce house, playground, and a couple of meals, we went to the main stage for a little dancing. the kids really got into it. hana was especially taken with the musicians. the video shows her thwarted attempt to get on stage, but then you see her scampering off to the other side of the stage and then the video cuts to the next scene. what's not in the video is that after she sprinted to the other side of the stage, she climbed on it and proceeded to run around macauley culkin style until she was cornered and carried off by her unamused father. it was a little embarrassing, but still pretty funny to me, because the musicians thought it was so cute. in fact, in between songs, hana engaged the musicians about their various instruments and she (surprising) could name quite a few of them (violin, drum, guitar...). the kids really got into the dancing. while we were dancing around, a greek woman came up to me and invited me to hold her hand. she proceeded to teach me the syrtos (pronounced seer-toes). hana made for a complicated dance partner but by the end of the song, i got the hang of it even though i had to carry her part of the time. it was really fun to have all of the people dancing around and the kids twirling to and fro...

after the regular folks cleared out, these adorable kids came in and did some traditional greek dancing. they performed for about 30 minutes or so and hana, jack and charlie were totally enthralled (that is, until jack fell asleep). hana seems to think that when ever she sees a dance performance of any type, she then should have "my turn". in fact, this has dissolved into a tantrum on a couple of occaisions, but because she got to dance before, and it was blistering hot, she was easily redirected with ice cold lemonade. i think we need to get that girl into to dance classes likety-split! anyway, while the kids performed people threw money and festival tokens (worth $1 a peice!) out to the dance floor (and sometimes, directly at them). they were so composed through it all, but it was all they could do to get through the bow before they were scrambling to collect their dance booty like that candy that falls from a pinata. that's gotta be pretty fun for them. made me wanna take up the greek dancing, i tell you what...

hana's only nap that day was the 20 minute cat nap she had on the car ride home, which occured right after she said "mommy, i not tired". as soon as the car stopped when she got to the house, she perked right up again. so she was nap free... that is until about 6 p.m. when she passed out in her chair while watching sesame street. we moved her to her bed without incident and she slept straight through until 7:30 the next morning. that's pretty unheard of for this one, who will go to bed between 8:00-8:30 every night but talk and sing to herself for at least an hour after that before conking out.

apparently, she was all festivaled out. last year, there's a picture of hana all passed out at the greek festival too (it would be in the blog archive in may 2008). must be something in the lemonade.

coffee house chic

i unearthed this video that jon shot at one of my favorite breakfast places (venus in berkeley). sometimes, at places that serve soy milk (hana can't drink regular milk) we ask for them to steam it and get it all foamy and serve it in a little espresso cup. hana loves this, and though we call it "special milk", she sometimes calls it "special coffee". there's no coffee in it mind you (what, you think we're crazy?!), but she just gets such a kick out of drinking "coffee" like mommy and daddy. in the video, she's having special milk and doing some people watching. she's always trying to see who's attention she can capture from across a crowded room. but in this case, she also did a lot of kicking on the guy sitting next to her. he was mercifully forgiving as he was brunching with his two young daughters as well. incidentally, one of those girls is who she's gloating to when she says "no, my milk" as if to say, "you just have regular milk in a glass... so sad for you".

and on the special beverage note: one thing with hana that we have tried to do is not use cutesy names for grown up beverages. for example, wine is not "mommy juice", it's wine. beer is not "daddy's medicine", it's just beer. we did this because the very first time she noticed, which was many months ago now, that we all had different beverages at the table, she was calling them out in some sort of libation roll call. she asked, "this is hana juice?" to which we replied "yes". and then to daddy's wine, she said "that's daddy juice?" to which he also replied affirmatively. but then she said she wanted to drink "daddy juice" and that pretty much did it for me. i declared, no euphamisms for that stuff. she would know beer, wine, margarita, whatever... and know that they were grown up drinks and she was not to have any. she's a smart and industrious kid. i didn't want her thinking "well, if it's just juice, why can't i have any?" she seems to get there's a difference and will say as much when she points out that one of us has a grown up beverage. let's just hope this carries through the teen years!

mommy takes the hard line... sigh.

lest there be any paternity questions: behold jon and his mini-me (in a skort).

this picture was taken at the tilden park merry go round. in april, we had been graced with several days of warm, summer-like weather (well, summer-like if you live somewhere else... summers can be pretty overcast sometimes in the bay area). i think the merry-go-round is a historical landmark and it is pretty cool. hana has not been there in over 6 months. when she went last time, she talked about it daily for months. she got to ride it 7 times before the good times were cut short...

you see, we took a break to eat a little picnic on the lawn and have a little bit of a frolic break in the sun.hana picked flowers...
and then decided that running around the parking lot would be fun. normally i can catch her, but in my delicate condition, she was too quick for me. she did not listen or respond to calls to turn back and the countdown to three ("if you don't come back by 3, we will go home and there will be no more merry go round") was met by more giggles.

so we packed up our blanket and went home. we had stern tones and expressed our dissapointment at having to leave the merry-go-round early, but she didn't really get it until the bell sounded and the merry-go-round started without her. she wailed pathetically as we strapped her in her carseat. it wasn't easy to cut it short like that. i wanted to play in the park some more. but a parent's got to drawn a line in the sand... at the parking lot.
ironically, jon captured the march of shame back to the blanket for posterity. i'm sure this indignation will be in her tell-all memoirs someday.

"happy peater" - part 1

in order to get ready for "happy peater" - on of the many ways "happy easter" comes out of hana- on the saturday before easter, nadia, paul and cole had the kids (jack, charlotte, tony and hana) over for easter egg dying. hana got very into painting the eggs as well as dying and stamping them. she is still learning about the delicate touch that eggs require so many eggs were cracked in the making of this easter.





after breaking this egg and realizing that it wasn't so easy to stamp the whites, she decided to just eat this one... and then stamp it some more.

all of this egg dying was in preparation for the big annual easter egg hunt at grandma glenda's and grandpa dan's house. glenda and nadia stuffed easter eggs with candy and coins to add to the real eggs that would be hidden. glenda really got into the spirit of things with her fashionable head gear...after the eggs were dyed, the kids had a blast playing in nadia and paul's back yard. the kids got to play in the mud in what cole calls his "outdoor kitchen" which is really to big clay pots with dirt and a nearby water source (not the pool). many mud pies made in that kitchen... they say that messy play is good for a child's development. well, i would say all of the kids developed A LOT that day...

in this picture, hana seems so small. but that's just the angle at which she's being shot... it seems that hana started a growth spurt a few weeks ago and hasn't really stopped yet. those are not shorts. those are sized 3T capris! admittedly, they had a slightly higher hemline than some of her other capris, but those don't even pretend to be capris anymore. she can still wear a few of her 3T clothes, but for the spring, we've had to buy her 4T clothes. and her feet are sized 9 - 9.5, which is the same size that tony, who's nearly 4, and a boy, wears. she's still pretty lean and has good muscle tone. so even though we buy her 4T clothing, if the waist does not adjust, they just don't stay up. in fact there are many 3T pants and skirts that she's grown out of in length, but if you don't cinch them way in, they are around her ankles in seconds. for those of you familiar with the adjustable waists on clothing, she is frequently on the 5th button-hole on each side and we still have to tell her to pull her pants up all the time. thankfully, her diaper helps protect us from the peek-a-boo crack scenario, but with any luck, we won't have that for long... hana is also wearing one of her favorite shirts. it's a tinkerbell shirt that cole and tony brought back from disneyland. she asks for it often (but we don't do laundry that much so she's frequently dissapointed).here is jack riding around. had easter egg dye, mud, strawberry and chocolate all over his face and hands. we tossed him a towel to wipe his hands and face and it landed on his head. he just sat there for a few minutes like... "uh guys..." and peered at us giggling adults sideways, almost humorlessly, until someone mercifully pulled the towel off his head and handed it to him. note how filthy his hands are...that level of filth is pretty much how all of the kids looked. although they're clothes were way worse than jack's. so we threw them all in the shower for a hose down and they all borrowed some of cole's pajamas for the ride home. hana was really into cole's dinosaur pjs and wants a pair of her own.

hana had so much fun that day that she, and all the kids, had a collective meltdown upon leaving... a situation compounded by all of them being totally nap-free. so hana was in a pretty foul mood when she got in the car (which jon thought was pretty cute so he mocked her by taking her picture).i'm swooping in here for a little attitude adjustment... there isn't much an attack of the smooches won't take care of.
returning smooches to mommy. she's into that now and i LOVE it! "mommy, i wanna kiss yo' face" and then "mommy, i wanna kiss yo' otha face" (meaning turn the other cheek). good times. i love this phase!

telling jokes now... looking a lot like jon here...

and speaking of jokes... hana is starting to tell jokes. well, she has the one joke done several ways. it usually begins with "knock knock". you say "who's there?" she says "me" we say "me who?" and then she's say "hana!" - as if to say "duh!" but then start laughing. or she will also say "come on in" followed by some giggles. but the funniest version of this joke is when she uses the set up to ask for something that she wants. for example, it'll go: "knock knock" , "who's there" , "me", "me who", "please have shark cup hot" (which is her short hand for asking for warm milk in her favorite shark sippy cup).

yes, i get that's not really funny, but she's trying to be clever and mix it up. she doesn't quite get the whole notion of a punch line yet... and how they are supposed to be funny in unexpected and ironic ways (well, i supposed it's unexpected to ask for milk as the end of a knock knock joke...). but it's funny that she tries.

anyway, back to easter:

easter sunday, we went to church in berkeley and they had an easter egg hunt after church. hana loved her "pwincess dress" that her great aunt dee dee made and she got many compliments on it all day. she's also into wearing her sunglasses when it's bright out and the weather was beautiful on easter. these butterfly sunglasses have a bit of a retro look to them. here's hana searching for easter eggs.

...and demonstrating the fruits of her labor. but since she was going to another easter party after this, we re-hid the eggs so the other kids could find them. hana liked doing this as much as finding them, but it was impossible to stop her from tossing the eggs into their new hiding places. we're still working on the gentle handling of eggs...

a better look that the diva shades...

"happy eater!" - part 2

after church, we drove out to grandma glenda's and grandpa dan's for the big easter egg hunt and party. jon found the cutest easter basket for hana this year, but the felt handle is unreinforced, so there were frequent egg-a-lanches until i stepped in to help out. the weather was beautiful: sunny and warm. all of the kids got a little early season tanning because we all forgot to put sunscreen on.

in order to let the easter bunny do his work hiding the eggs, we took the kids on a walk. it was our very own easter parade!






the easter egg hunt started with a kid stampede. the little ones (hana, jack and charlie) were allowed to go first, so as to avoid an "us festival" debacle.

i held hana's basket while she looked for eggs.

charlotte looked especially cute on easter. her egg hunting strategy was pretty amusing as well. she would pick the eggs up and shake them. if she didn't like the sound of the rattle, or if it had no rattle at all (as in the case of real eggs) she would toss 'em back. as a result, she grossed a lot of eggs with candy and money, and far fewer eggs containing stickers or actual yolks n' such.

hana and charlie stayed pretty close together. hana collected her own eggs, but reaped most of charlies rejects.

"look mommy! that's a big one!!!" when i told her that it was a ball and there there was nothing inside, she tossed it. she's becoming a shrewd candy consumer.

midway through the hunt, hana wanted to bust into the the booty and eat some candy. since i didn't have a chance to weed out all of the chocolate, jaw breakers and gum, i encouraged her to press on since there would be plenty of time for candy later. and let me just say, it's not like hana ate anything but candy before this time. i think she had a little nutrition at home (in the form of a muffin) but she ate jelly bellys all through church, which kept her pretty happy and quiet.

at one point, one of the kids discovered an egg in the tree. this prompted hana to start searching the skies for eggs...

after the little kids hunt, there was a special, more challenging hunt for the 3 older kids (2 middle school and 1 high school), these eggs all had money (bills) in them... with the "big money egg" being the one with the $20 in it. all the little kids "helped".

when that was over, and eggs and candy had been sorted, the kids found their respective corners in the yard where they commenced to eating an inordinate amount of candy.

jack and hana have a pretty special bond. well, all of the kids are pretty tight. but jack has been known to throw a midweek tantrum or two because hana's not around. here they are "sharing" a seat on a rock... just before hana pushes him off.

it was a really fun (totally nap-free) exhausting weekend. next stop: mother's day!