Eli Junkies: There are several blogs from today, including the promised all-pictures blog, below that are updates on Eli. But this is, after all, still my blog. So this post is about the Callahan’s, not the Zannis’. :)
Today was a fun day! It was the first day this week that wasn’t crazy-chaotic, and it felt just a little bit like life was normal. For those of you whom I have concerned about my driving with my recent posts, I will have you know that many times in my life I have not stopped at stop signs, but today I was so careful I even stopped at a stop sign that wasn’t there!!! They FINALLY re-routed Grants Mill Road today, which means that it now comes out at the stop light past the monastery rather than at the stop SIGN before the monastery. However, I did not realize this until I had already stopped at a now non-existent stop sign. I looked around, confused, and then realized – no more stop signs on Old Leeds Road!! Now THAT is worth celebrating!! Let’s just hope it doesn’t make me get another TICKET on Old Leeds Road.
Ali and I went to Chris’ office for lunch, which was fun. Going to a “company lunch” made it actually feel like I was really an employee there! I’ve been to tons of company lunches at Slappey, and that’s where you really get to know your co-workers – you know, who spills food on their selves at every meal, who tends to have those type of teeth that food sticks out of, etc. But today, Daniel’s Mom sent bar-be-que and all the fixins (including banana puddin’) to the office as a Thank You. I’m not exactly sure what the Thank You was for, but You’re welcome!! It was wonderful, and we all enjoyed it immensely, except for Ali, who is teething and isn’t eating hardly at all this week. Unless you let her “dip”. Then she’ll eat anything!! She also wasn’t eating much tonight at supper (at the food court in the mall), and so we saved the secret weapon for last – Polynesian Sauce from Chic-Fil-A. She looked like she had been in a cheap horror flick by the time she had finished, but it was TOTALLY worth the mess. She downed everything in sight!!! After very liberally dipping it, of course. Seriously – she will dip anything in Poly Sauce – including all fruits and vegetables, even watermelon. Ick. Oops – hold on.
OK I’m back. Chris just text messaged me from upstairs (the baby’s asleep – can’t yell) and needed me to bring him clothes from the laundry room. I hadn’t been able to do laundry in 2 weeks, so I washed everything.
Ali is doing great on walking. She is walking all the time now – she has quit crawling cold turkey. It’s amazing how quickly a kid can pick up walking skills when they wait until they are 16 months old to start. She is also understanding nearly everything we say now, which is so much fun. I’ve been experimenting the last couple of days with giving her detailed instructions, and she has been performing them perfectly, like “take a piece of candy and give it to Gina (who was on the other side of the office)”, and “can you go get my phone and bring it to me?” and (from the other side of the house), “Go up the stairs and go in your room, it’s time to go night night.” It’s really neat to see her do exactly what I tell her to do, and in a thoughtful, mostly internal voice, repeat part of my commands back to herself while doing them to make sure she remembers what she’s doing, like “upsta, upsta, night night.” or “dane, dane” (what she calls Gina). I love seeing her little wheels turning!
Well, that’s the Callahan update. Here are a few pictures I took of Ali today:
My little tanned beauty. “Pretty” is one of her favorite words right now. She points to everyone’s jewelry or bows and says “pretty!!”. And she MUST have a bow in her head, or she pats the top of her head and very distressed, says “bow!! bow!!” Such a girly-girl.
Dazed and confused from teething.
This looks like she did the ever-famous self-portrait, holding the camera herself.
Her new “big girl” shoes. These cracked me up – I had to buy them!! She LOVES them. I also got her another pair of shoes with very small multi-colored rhinestones on them, which, of course, she says “pretttty!!” about every time she sees them.
