Rachel Callahan

YBUtT

June 8, 2010 Rachel Callahan Kids: The Experience., Weird Strange and True

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, my kid is fascinated – no, completely and unequivocally obsessed – with “Yucky Bubble Gum Under the Table.”

And, since Chris and I don’t chew gum, I’m pretty sure that her comprehension of the stuff is that it’s some sort of organic bacterial mold that grows underneath tables that is to be avoided at all costs, or you might find yourself growing the same sort of nasty growth on your underneath.

(Something I didn’t take into consideration when telling her that her Princess, sparkly toothpaste was Bubble Gum Flavored. Anyone need a tube of kid’s sparkly Princess bubble gum flavored toothpaste, hardly-been-used?)

Ali suspects that this very sticky growth that she’s been studying so intently spawned from The Famous Charleston Pole:

Which makes perfect sense to me.

Being that I’m not a gum chewer myself, I’ve been a bit in awe and wonder (and quite a bit of disgust) at how prevalent YBUtT is. I mean – the girl has NEVER been under a table where she wasn’t able to name me MULTIPLE specimens of the stuff growing under there.

Which makes me spend way too much time pondering…do all gum chewers stick their gum under tables? And I just don’t understand the NECESSITY to do so because I’m not a gum chewer?

(Like people without boogers just don’t understand that sometimes you absolutely NEED to pick your nose?)

Or is there a minority percentage of gum-stickers that are just VERY busy, somewhat like the Gideon’s supernatural ability to leave a bible in every single hotel room?

At any rate, the moment that nearly convinced ME that YBUtT really is something that grows under tables was at our first sonogram.

I headed to the bathroom to put on the proper garments for my upcoming internal movie, and Ali and Chris waited around in the Sonogram room.

Ali stooped under one of the ever-so-important sonogram-room tables to check out the specimens right before I left the room. From the bathroom, I heard the following…

Ali: “EWWWW, Daddy!! There’s Yucky Bubble Gum Under the Table!!!!”

Chris: “No, I don’t think so, honey. That’s not a normal table – that’s a Sonogram table.”

Ali: “Then what is this red stuff under here?”

Chris, bending over: “Oh. Wow. There IS Yucky Bubble Gum Under the Sonogram Table. Who would DO that?!”

(Sonogram tech nervously laughs…which led us to seriously suspect her in the crime.)

And so there you go. No surface that has an underside is immune to this rapidly spreading (and very colorful) growth. So don’t touch it – or your underside might end up with sticky splotches, too.

On a Cheerier (and much Shorter) Note…

June 7, 2010 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Pregnancy: The Psychoses.

Newbie’s first inclusion in a family picture: 11 weeks!

I’ll be back and “really” blogging tomorrow. Newbie is giving me quite the day today (of which I promise you don’t want to hear the details), most presumably as payback for doubting his/her force over my body by daring to get off the couch and go out of town.

I no longer doubt The Force.

My One Rant of the Year, Brought to You by BP.

June 6, 2010 Rachel Callahan Actually Possibly Informational, On a more serious note. . ., Yes I'm a beach bum. What of it?

We live 4 1/2 hours from the Alabama Coastline. We have always adored the beach, and, thanks to the fact that we have relatives that are locals, we are fortunate enough to get to come fairly often.

Alabama was not blessed with much coastline (I personally feel that is due to Florida being a bit greedy on coastline-choosing day), but the beaches we did get are gorgeous. Different than any other coastline I’ve ever been to, the Gulf of Mexico beaches have the most luxurious of white sand to sink your toes into, the perfect amount of waves for families to play in, and our little beach towns of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach have just the right amount of civilization to make it fun without being over commercialized.

However, all of that is in the process of changing. The BP oil crisis has made it to our beaches, and won’t be leaving for quite some time.

We headed down here on Friday to spend some time with family and to enjoy our favorite getaway town. We knew that we were within days of the projected oil landfall, but we didn’t realize that we would be down here for the historical Day One.

We ate dinner Friday night over the ocean, admiring somewhat melancholically the pristine beaches and gorgeous water. The twitter reports had already started coming in that there were small amounts of oil being found down the beach, so we knew this would be a last moment.

On Saturday, we headed to the beach to see for ourselves.

It was a gorgeous day – perfect for swimming in the ocean. The air was warm, the water was warm, the waves were perfect.

But it was too late.

The sand was lined with globules of nasty, thick oil:

It stuck to our feet and refused to come off – which makes me shiver to think what it is doing to the countless animals that come in contact with it.

And tar balls were floating in the water, resulting in the waters being deemed unsafe to swim in due to hazardous chemicals.

All I could think about was that this was just day two. It was going to get SO much worse. AND they haven’t even stopped the leak yet!!

I know I’m not the most educated person on this issue – one of the least, I’m sure. But I can’t get past this point: If you’re technologically able to drill through the ocean and earth and harness oil, then you should be technologically able and responsible enough to fix things in a reasonable timeframe when they go wrong. And if you’re not, then quit putting our world in peril with your mistakes.

Of course, I had just seen the BP commercial the night before, apologizing profusely and promising that everything would be made right, and that thousands of people and hundreds of boats were working on the cleanup all over the coastline. I even heard one BP exec say when interviewed on the news, “We have twice the number of people that are needed working on cleanup.”

But there were no signs of BP here this weekend, unless you count their nasty mess. No signs of anyone doing anything except beachgoers staring in shock and dread of what was to come for our precious beaches.

From some expert’s reports, our ecosystem may not be restored to its natural state for the rest of her childhood:

And I cannot tell you how much that breaks my heart.

And there are so, so many more people and animals that are and will be much more tragically impacted than us.

I don’t see how BP can ever “make right” how vastly they’ve taken away from all of us.

We plan on still supporting our beach towns by returning here throughout the year. Although we may not have been able to prevent the ecological destruction caused by BP, we can prevent the economical fallout and keep our beach towns alive. If you live nearby, I encourage you to do the same.

I plan on running a series on Alabama Bloggers featuring all of the other fun activities at and near our coastlines to help people adjust their vacations without relocating them. If you would like to write a post for this series or offer ideas, email me at rachel@alabamabloggers.com.

Disturbing or Hilarious?

June 3, 2010 Rachel Callahan "Deep" Thoughts by Rachel, Denim Drama, Don't Listen to my Fashion Advice, Weird Strange and True

Item #1:

This toy machine seems to have been very strategically placed at my favorite mall:

My Vote: Hilarious. I especially love that ALL of the “toy chests” are missing…as if everyone frantically stocked up on them before going in the store behind it to buy some packaging for their new finds.

Item #2:

They’re now running commercials for the very Mom-Jeaned Denim Diapers that we talked about a couple of weeks ago…

My Vote: DIS-TURBING. If a child is old enough to not just walk, but SAUNTER down the street, he should be wearin’ some pants. If they’d done it with a crawling baby, however, it COULD have had hilarious potential. MAYBE.

Plus? When they say “chic”, it doesn’t sound like “chic”. And they know it, too – they have a modified version of the commercial that they run during Dora the Explorer that replaces “chic” with “fashionable”. Thank goodness – because really, do you want your toddler running around saying, “My diaper is full. Full of CHIC.”

Also? The fronts of those diapers are U-G-L-Y. They’re definitely Grandpa Jeans all the way.

You weigh in on both: Disturbing or Hilarious? And have you seen anything else disturbingly hilarious lately?

Tilted Uteruses Rock.

June 2, 2010 Rachel Callahan "Deep" Thoughts by Rachel, I embarrass myself just for your amusement., It's Tough Being a Girl, Pregnancy: The Psychoses.

(Or would that be Uteri?)

(And yes, I am aware that I have used the “U” word on my blog twice in a week. But you know what? I’m pregnant, and that’s kinda where my baby is hanging out these days. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that I have 99% female readership. So you 1% can pretend I am saying…Unicorn…or something.)

ANYWAY.

Today was my OB Doc visit, for which I treated myself with an Icee. Because I’ve finally figured out the loophole in Newbie’s ALL DRINKS STINK aversion.

(Seriously – he/she won’t let me drink coffee, coke, tea, lemonade, Izzes, or most fruit juices, and water is the only thing that is slightly tolerable, which is not normally something I take any pleasure in ingesting.)

So the loophole: I have come to realize that pretty much any drink with a texture is perfectly palatable.

Orange Juice with lots of pulp, Smoothies, Orange Juliuses, and Icees.

What made me make this connection is when I realized that I was eating Watermelons as if they were drinks. This sunk in somewhere after my third watermelon in four days.

Yes, of course I’m ashamed to admit the quantity of my watermelon ingestion, but I figure, think how many Coke calories those three (or four or five or six) watermelons replaced.

But now, I can EVEN drink a coke Icee, which is absolutely glorious, because I have desperately missed a good coke.

So now I just need to get an Icee machine installed in my house…for Newbie, you know.

So anyway. Back to the doctor’s appointment. I walked in with my Icee in hand, right past the PLEASE NO FOOD OR DRINKS sign (because really, an Icee isn’t either a food OR a drink, right?), and started on my mounds of paperwork.

This was my long visit – the one where I fill them in on my entire health history all the way back to my ingrown toenail when I was three and a half years old, and then the nurse interviews me and asks me even more probing questions, and then I get to hear the heartbeat, and then they take all of the blood out of my body and send me home empty-veined.

During my nursely informational interrogation, she asked me what my husband’s name was. I told her, and then she pulled up the “Problems” field and typed in “Husband – Chris”.

(I know I’m probably not supposed to be watching what she’s typing in about me, but since I was, I couldn’t let that one go.)

“So husbands are problems around here?”

“Well, our new software doesn’t have a spot for the husband’s name, so we just put him under problems. Plus, some of them really ARE.”

Mental note: If I ever find myself in the software design field again and am writing an OB Software Package, remember to put a “Baby-Daddy” field in.

So I finally got back to the room to hear the heartbeat, and the next nurse came in with her spy-on-baby device. She poked, she prodded, she rolled it around, she looked for that baby in every inch of my torso and then some. No luck.

I wasn’t surprised since they had trouble on my first visit even finding the baby on the sonogram because I apparently have a tilted, uh, Unicorn.

Plus, not finding the heartbeat meant that I got my THIRD sonogram, a special treat for sure. So after a while, my doc came in and did a sonogram, and sure enough, despite my tilted state, Newbie was perfectly fine, looked MUCH more like a baby than two weeks ago, and was unusually highly wiggly.

Like, REALLY wiggly. Arms and legs were flailing, head was bobbing – it was awesome.

(Which MIGHT have had something to do with that Jumbo sized Coke Icee that I had pretty much drained at that point…which could only mean that Newbie wants MORE Icees. And Watermelons.)

So the moral of this story is, despite the fact that my tilted Unicorn is most likely the cause of my bladder being pinched in half AND my left leg’s nerve being constantly plucked as if it were a musical instrument, it DID get me a free pass to get to see Newbie again.

So, Tilted Uteruses Rock.

The Legends of Mysteries.

June 1, 2010 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Actually Possibly Informational, Homeschooling: Not just for the socially awkward anymore., Mystery Solved

Since I haven’t been much of a fun Mommy lately, I wanted to get Ali a special craft that we could do together while still in my couchbound status.

So I bought her a new Sticky Mosaic kit, but this time it was super exciting: Mosaic Princess Crowns:

After all, no three year old can have enough crowns.

Just like last time, she loved her legend, and followed it closely to make her crown:(And of course I did a bit of helping as well…)

She was QUITE happy with the results:

(Why yes, she’s wearing her bathing suit cover-up over her nightgown. At 11 am. Because she’s very avant-garde in her fashion choices.)

Around the time we finished our crown project, I realized that I actually felt pretty good, a feeling I haven’t been too familiar with the past few weeks. Plus, Ali had asked to “do school”, something I’ve been woefully neglectful in doing with her lately.

Since we haven’t done too much (except for working on our countries) in a while, she was pretty rusty on writing her letters.

And so, I had an idea to make it fun for her, combining her love for legends and her recent obsession with the word “Mystery”..

(You see, she got the words Mister and Mystery confused and was calling all men “Mystery David” and “Mystery Chuck”, so I had to define the two words. And ever since that moment, she’s been begging me to tell her another mystery, and another, and another….)

So…I made her a legend,

Using what she considers the Holy Grail of Mommy’s Precious Office Supplies..

And then I made her a MYSTERY:

She got right to work finding the shapes on her legend and writing out her mystery:
It took a lot of concentration, of course:
I was sure to use words that I knew she would recognize (of which there aren’t too many)…
And she was THRILLED to be a mystery solver!

Of course, after that, she insisted that she just needed to use the Holy Grail Highlighters herself and make a legend for ME,

And then asked me to make a mystery out of THAT. After all, she doesn’t want me to feel unchallenged.

But at any rate, I think Mystery Daddy will be very proud of her Mister-solving abilities.

Only

May 30, 2010February 28, 2011 Rachel Callahan I would NEVER take too many pictures. . ., Kids: The Experience., Photographical Oddities, Weird Strange and True

Only in Alabama would you find this postcard hanging on someone’s Refrigerator:

(My Parent’s fridge, if you’re wondering. Mom said she hung it front and center because she didn’t want to forget to take advantage of that great offer from the local dump – that’s bargain shopping at it’s…nitty-grittiest.)

Only a Beer WEEK could last 10 days.

Only in the year 2010 would they start selling garbage cans for $21.99 and calling them designer baby bathtubs.

Only my kid would make the mental leap to assume that if she’s put in time out, she must also be required to keep her eyes closed.

The Agonizing Issue of (Boy) Names.

May 28, 2010 Rachel Callahan Just My Luck, Pregnancy: The Psychoses.

Chris and I are delightfully in agreement on almost all aspects of life. we love the same vacations, television shows (except 24 (Ding Dong the Wicked Show is Dead)), houses, furnishings – ALMOST everything.

And then there are some things that are even better than that, where we have beautiful complimentary tastes. For instance, we both adore The Olive Garden, and when our salad comes out, we have a well-practiced routine of immediately splitting up the goodies: I love the tomatoes and olives – he doesn’t; he loves the peppers – I don’t.

It makes for a lovely, peaceful life.

But one of the few areas of life for which there is no peace happens to be the process of naming a child of the male species.

When I was pregnant with Ali, we made the first-timer’s mistake of feeling the naming pressure immediately, and so began the male naming arguments way before finding out that it wasn’t at all necessary.

This time, besides the fact that I’m not ready to restart our never-ending debates again, I’m not really feeling that the names I would pick out for Newbie at this moment would be very complimentary….they’d most likely be a good biblical name meaning “Child of my pain” or “My Misery” or “Seriously, kid – you have to give me EVERY pregnancy side effect known to woman?!”.

(Whether those biblical kids with the descriptive names got made fun of on the playground or not, you’ve got to admire the honesty of their mothers.)

But, despite the fact that we’re not ready to begin negotiations again, we’ve been reviewing the ground we covered last time…

Rachel’s Top Picks:

Micah
Rachel’s thoughts: This is my all-time favorite boy name. It’s a perfect mixture of Biblical strong Manliness, “differentness”, and it’s a play off of Chris’ middle name, Michael, without being in the top 10 most common boy names of all time.

Chris’ thoughts: It sounds too much like my middle name and my Father’s name. Everyone would be confused and call him Michael. And eventually, Mike.

Because, my first rule of names is that ALL names will be nicked!! Ali’s name is Alana. Do we ever use it? No. Micah sounds great on paper, but I guarantee you that “Hey Mike, What’s up?” is predestined if you go with Micah.

For instance, you can name him Rumplestiltskin with all the hope for an elegant literary name, but I promise his buddies will just call him Rump. And one day, without thinking, you’ll even say, “C’mere, Rump, and give me a kiss.”

Alexander

Rachel’s thoughts: Another great name, with a great shortened version (Alex) to take care of the potential nickname issue.

Chris’ thoughts: I can’t help but think of Worf’s son every time I hear this name. Plus, I am not the most manly man that has ever lived. I need all the help I can get. In this P.C. touchy-feely androgenous generation, I’m looking for a hard core masculine name that is not used for girls, even when nicked. Alexander WILL become Alex, and in this generation, that’s a girl’s name too.

Chris’ Top Picks:

Travis

Rachel’s thoughts: When Chris first said this was his favorite boy name, I totally thought he was joking. I mean, Chris isn’t necessarily a country music fan, but how can you not hear this name and immediately visualize Stetsons and a Cowboy Hat, paired with stringy long hair and a pair of Wranglers? Ew.

Years ago, I made it unbelievably clear that no child coming out of my body would ever be named Travis, so Chris bitterly named his truck AND his piggy bank Travis.

Whatever works.

Chris’ thoughts: Travis is a good, strong, male, football-sounding name. AND there are NO potential feminine nicknames. And, it would honor my truck to have my son named after him.

Owen

Rachel’s thoughts: I am NOT birthing a 90 year old man. I can virtually smell an old man just by thinking of this name…and I have this visual image of brown loafers, polyester dress pants that are two inches too short, and dentures sitting in a glass of murky water.

Chris’ thoughts: It’s a family name, and I’ve never heard of a girl named Owen.

Our Compromises Last Time:

After weeks of nomenclature war, we agreed that Tyler was a good name. For quite a while, the male version of Ali was referred to as Tyler. Then, one day, out of the blue, Chris declared that he no longer liked Tyler.

Um…what?!?!? You’re totally not allowed to do that.

After the destruction of the name Tyler and trying to convince each other (with no successes at all) to like our respective favorite names, we finally printed out two copies of the Top 1000 boy names. We each went through it separately, picked our top 20, ranked them, gave them point values (20 points for #1 choice, 19 for #2 choice, etc), and then added our scores together to find ANY names that got points from both of us.

(Not that we’re geeks or anything.)

This led to an agreement on the name Taylor. But that was then, and in the four years since that point, Taylor Swift has come in like a hurricane and made Taylor way too much of a girl’s name, so that’s totally off the list now.

So, you see, we have issues.

Heaven help us if this is a boy. And, between you and me, I really think that it is.

Disclaimer: No offense, implied or intended, was meant toward any of your names, your children’s names, your pet’s names, or your relative’s names. All naming opinions are the opinions of the authors alone and not necessarily anyone else’s in the galaxy.

My Friend, the Television.

May 27, 2010 Rachel Callahan "Deep" Thoughts by Rachel, A Day in the Life, Actually Possibly Informational, Kids: The Experience.

As I feel somewhat couchbound these days, and, therefore, am not doing much of anything exciting to blog about, I have found a bit more solace than usual in the television.

(That, and a new love for painting my fingernails, something I haven’t done in a decade. Because long, thick fingernails is one of the only positive side effects a la Newbie, and I want to FULLY appreciate it.)

(My pinkie nail is so gorgeous right now that Sally Hanson could totally rip it right out of my nail bed and sell it as a press on. No lie.)

And so, in my lack of more interesting and coherent thoughts, I will share my “deep” televisional thoughts…Especially in one area that I haven’t ventured into in about 20 years: Children’s movies.

Ali has never watched too much TV – an episode of Dora or Thomas here or there, but not full-length movies. Until now, when her Mommy needs desperately to sleep while she watches, or to simply rest in order not to puke.

And so, in our new Movie Watching Era, I’ve come to some conclusions:

1. Pixar makes EVERYTHING better. I am completely in LOVE with Pixar. They should totally be given an award for miraculously finding the way to wholly entertain children AND adults all at once.

2. The crisis in each movie must be carefully analyzed from a three year old’s perspective to see if it will scare the toddler snot out of them or not. For instance…

Cars has the completely non-traumatic storyline. The “crisis” is simply that the star selfishly wants to get back to his race. Nothing remotely bothersome in that..
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs – also quite perfect. What kid wouldn’t enjoy food falling from the sky? And who cares if it gets gigantacorically bigger?? Especially when it’s mounds of ICE CREAM?!?!?
Finding Nemo was surprisingly a horribly disturbing movie. Start out by having the Mom die (because all Moms die in Disney movies), then the poor Momless kid gets traumatically taken from his Father. We ended up fast forwarding to the happy ending to prevent Ali from needing Prozac.
Oh – and the vegetarian shark was pretty disturbing, too.

3. Sometimes the plot line you THINK would bother a kid totally wouldn’t, while something that you wouldn’t even think of as a crisis would destroy their little hearts. For instance…

The Queen in Snow White says in the most horrid voice, “Cut out her heart and bring it back to me in this box”. I was disturbed. Ali didn’t even blink.
(Thank goodness there’s not a lot of heart-cutting-out that happens around here.)
Cinderella’s pink dress getting torn off by the mean sisters is STILL the Number One ranking most horror-movie-scene Ali’s ever watched. The nightmares stopped, but the memories remain.

4. Always communicate about your movie strategies. When watching Monsters, Inc, I downplayed the fact that monsters were scaring CHILDREN by talking about how cute they were. Ali totally bought it. At the end, Chris came in and said, “Was that fun? Were the Monsters SCARY???” She cringed and curled into fetus position and said, “Yes!!!! They scared me SO MUCH!!!”

5. Some children’s movies are so blatantly full of very depressing and disturbing social messages (because three year olds TOTALLY get that stuff and all) that they don’t have room for a decent plot, any entertaining moments for children OR adults, and are a ridiculous waste of good cartoonists. And that movie would be Happy Feet.

To summarize, in our New Era of actually watching Children’s movies, Mine and Ali’s favorites have been Cars, Up, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, all of which are magnificently entertaining and, thank goodness, not scary to three year olds.

Any and all recommendations of movies along the same lines are greatly appreciated, as our future still looks pretty movie-ey.

Now, I’m going to go back to admiring my fingernails.

Hurricane Newbie

May 25, 2010 Rachel Callahan A Bit More Vulnerable Than I Usually Am, It's Tough Being a Girl, Pregnancy: The Psychoses.

Ali asked to call Daddy this morning. When he got on the phone, she verbally exploded into the phone..

“I’m sick because I coughed all night long and Mommy just threw up all her food in the potty and I need you to come home right now and make me feel better!!!!”

That pretty much sums up how we’ve been feeling lately. Ali is desperately tired of me being desperately ill, as am I. And yes, she’s sick too, but she coughed for about five minutes when she woke up, not all night long, poor (dramatic) kid.

I try to never write a whiner blog, but at some point, it becomes impossible to be honest and yet not whine a little. Because Newbie has been pretty much a misery-inducing parasite for the past four and a half weeks straight.

I’ve told Ali that she was a much more well-behaved fetus…and she seems to take comfort her superior status.

If it were just the nausea, I think I’d be able to handle it, but it’s ohsomuch more than that, and anything not caused directly by Newbie is instead being caused as a side effect from my attempts at medicating my other issues (which I’m starting to give up on).

After Ali witnessing me cry for the second time in her life yesterday (the first time she found so traumatic that she still talks about it mournfully and often) as I was totally DONE with this stage of pregnancy, I decided that I couldn’t continue trying to do everything, and so basically haven’t been out of bed or off the couch since then (except to throw up my food, of course).

But I’m well aware that it’s all worth it. Due to a more concerning set of side effects, I had to go back to the doctor last Monday to make sure everything was okay. We were relieved to see that Newbie has apparently thrived in the mess he/she’s made of me – a billion times bigger, heart beating like crazy, and totally snuggled up to my cuddly, cozy uterine wall.

The dishes may not get done,

Work may be late,

Ali may have to play Princesses by herself,

And blogs may not come as often,

But I’m growing a human.

And I’m going to do something I rarely do and cut myself some slack.