Rachel Callahan

The Science of Toddler Play

May 16, 2009 Rachel Callahan Toddlers: The Experience

I have formed a theory.

Toddler interaction and together-play has an inverse relationship with toy-like activities.

For instance, if we go to the McWane Center or the Park with AJ, where there is a very high level of fun distracting things to play with, Ali and AJ tend to go in opposite directions, both differently distracted.

If we are at home, where there is a medium level of toy distractions, they will play together half the time and play alone half the time.

However, if we are at a restaurant, outside with no toys, or anywhere else where there are (in toddler terms) bleak landscapes, they play together constantly, make up games, sing songs, and talk.

So I’m thinking we should get rid of all toys and parks and playgrounds and just have toddlers interact in wide open spaces.

Hm. Or maybe not.

However, I tested my theory last night when AJ came to stay with us for a while. And it proved to be pretty solid.

When we were on the porch with nothing but the porch swing, they wanted to sit together, talk, and play together:

We went to dinner at Taziki’s, and they danced together all the way through the meal, and then for quite a while afterwards, as happy with their toy-less landscape as can be:

Chris and I sat, and talked, and relaxed.

But when we played inside with all the toys, they played some together, argued about a toy a couple of times, and played alone (and even in opposite rooms!) quite a bit.

I’m going to have to delve further into the application and maximum usage to my advantage of this theory.

In other news, AJ is now sleeping in a big girl bed, so she’s not a big fan of pack n’ plays anymore. But we have a big pack n’ play that we hardly ever bring out, so we sold it to her as a “very, very, very special bed”. She bought it hook, line and sinker.
As did Ali, who also wanted to sleep in the special bed.
Thanks, Ali, for your help in selling the product. AJ looked at me with awe and said, “It is SO very pretty!!”.

Before bed, though, I offered to let her try on Ali’s pretty white dress. AJ is going to be in her Aunt Sherri’s wedding in October, and will be wearing Ali’s dress.

Her first reaction was excitement, then she changed her mind and didn’t want to wear it, then she wanted to wear just the hat and carry the basket (in her diaper – made for quite a cute ensemble), then she finally wanted to put on the dress:

And was QUITE thrilled with it from then on.

She also wanted to practice dropping petals. Lucky for her, I still had the ones (now dried) from Gina’s wedding:

Ali, who was wearing the pink sash, decided that she needed to help.
Poor thing. She didn’t realize she looked more like Karate Kid than Flower Girl.

They were quite happy with their accomplishment. Maybe that means that AJ will be better at actually DROPPING the petals than Ali was.

For comparison’s sake, here’s a side-by-side of each of them in the dress (with the only difference being that Ali wore the pink sash and AJ has on the white sash):
I was starting to think they were looking more and more different, but when you put it like this, they are still pretty similar (and for new readers, no, they are not related).

We had family bible time,

. . .and then everyone slept happily ever after in their very, very, very special beds.

The End.

Conquer The Caption: Week Seven

May 15, 2009 Rachel Callahan Conquer The Caption

So I took a week off to contemplate the meaning of life and the continuance of Conquer the Caption.

Or maybe I took a week off because I was on vacation. One or the other.

But I seriously have wondered – should I keep CtC going? It doesn’t seem to have taken off yet, and it is somewhat of a low commented series (I track post popularity by comments, so if you like a series, ya gotta speak up!!).

However, let’s give it another week and see how it goes.

Last CtC was a special “What the heck is this” edition. I found this thing in my yard and was completely befuddled as to what it was:
As were all of you. No one had a good plausible answer (it’s too glass-like to be polymer clay, too big to be jewelry, etc. . .), but I definitely give the Conquer Prize to Kitty for her creative explanation and justification of said explanation:

I think it is an alien brain fossilized. You can see the eyeball clearly. It is one of ET’s relatives I am sure.

I like it. And, by the way, it’s still sitting in my kitchen. So if any of you paranormal researchers out there would like it for your studies, let me know.

Now, for this week’s CtC, I’m going to give you two pictures to choose from (or caption both, if you’re feeling feisty) from our family vacation:

Photo A:

Photo B:

Here’s how to play:

Write a caption for the above picture(s) and post it in the comments of THIS POST.
AND/OR:
Put up your OWN photo (not mine) on your own blog and link it here (using a permalink – let me know if you don’t know how) with the mister linky below. Then other people (like me) can come to your blog and write captions for YOUR photo, too!

Earthborn Pottery Giveaway and Special Sale Opportunity!!!

May 14, 2009 Rachel Callahan Earthborn Pottery, Giveaways and Contests

For those of you who have been around for a while, you will remember that I introduced you to my Aunt Tena and her amazing pottery back at my Anniversary Giveaway Jubilee. You can read about how thrilled Beth and Jennifer were with their prizes from Earthborn Pottery here and here, respectively.

Well, I have fabulous news.

Tena recently was asked to create and loan all of the dinnerware needed for the Birmingham Museum of Art’s Annual Ball (which, by the way, was a $750 per person event. Needless to say, I was NOT in attendance).

Photo from the Birmingham Museum of Art’s Lotus Blossom Ball:

Now that the ball is over, Tena has 300 of the above red-footed dinner plates (that have been used only once) to sell.

So, instead of their usual price of $54 per plate, she is selling these plates for $20 per plate! The minimum order for this super deal is 10 plates, but for my readers only, she is offering a minimum order of 5 plates. Which means that you can get $270 worth of handmade, designer pottery for $100!!

However, you can start your pottery collection off with a bang, because Tena has given me two of these plates to offer to you as a giveaway!

To enter this giveaway simply comment on this post. You do not have to be a registered user to do so – you can comment anonymously – just be sure you leave your name and a contact email address in your comment!

You may receive one extra entry each for the following: 1. If you are a Blogger Follower, 2. if you Subscribe via a feed reader, 3. if you follow me via twitter, 4. if you blog about this giveaway, or 5. if you tweet about this giveaway. Be sure to leave a separate comment for each of your extra entries.

This giveaway will end on Monday, May 25th, and I will announce the winner on Tuesday, May 26th.

HOWEVER, If you want to take part in this offer, don’t wait until the end of the giveaway to do so. This is a rare and fabulous deal (over 60% off!) and Tena told me that they are going fast. To purchase, you can visit Tena’s storefront in Leeds, Alabama, or you can order online by emailing her from the website (15% shipping fee applies). Be sure and let her know that you are one of my readers for the special deal on minimum orders.

A Neighborhood Mystery is Afoot. . .

May 14, 2009January 6, 2014 Rachel Callahan Investigative Report, Utter Silliness, Weird Strange and True

A few days ago, I walked out to get the mail. When I got there, I was quite puzzled by the sudden appearance of this:

NO, not all the dirt and grime on our mailbox. That’s always been there and has no projection of being removed any time soon.

A raised, green reflective dot, about the size of a quarter, had suddenly appeared.

Why? Who decided that I needed a reflective dot on my mailbox? Isn’t it a federal crime to mess with mail or MAIL CONTAINERS?

So I started looking around.

Across the street: Freddy and Christie had the very same dot.

(You can see it’s reflective properties in that picture)

I widened my investigation. Next door: They had a RED dot!!!!

In fact, upon further investigation, most of our neighbors had the RED dot.

But then, some neighbors had no dot at all (for instance, Alice had NO dot, which assuaged my fears that they were marking bloggers).

(Then again, Freddy hasn’t blogged in about 10 1/2 decades, so he most likely wouldn’t have gotten marked in that case)

Ali and I did an unofficial mailbox survey while out on a walk yesterday and discovered that:

33.65% of mailboxes had no dot .
64.35% of mailboxes had red dots.
In the whole neighborhood, there were only two houses with green dots. Ours and Freddy and Christie’s.

I am quite puzzled as to the meaning of these dots.

Are we marked for execution?

Or are all the red dots marked for execution and we’re marked to be spared?

My un-fun, logical theories are:

There’s a new person doing the newspaper route who can’t read numbers, so in true equal opportunity form, someone went through and marked with colors. Maybe green means we get the weekend papers only, red means daily, and no dot means no paper. (I need to survey Alice and Freddy and Christie’s paper practices to help prove this theory.)
Maybe they are related to garbage pickup. (Although this would be a riot since we’ve never paid for our garbage pickup due to being completely unable to get them to send us a bill. Half the time I think that they just pick up everybody’s garbage without regard to the fact that we have no sticker, and the other half of the time I think that it must be on auto-draft out of the former house-owner’s checking account, and in a very un-accounting like fashion, they never look at it. Oops.)

My preferable, more inventive theories are:

Someone is going through and marking the excellent neighbors (green), the bad neighbors (red) and the neutral or hermit neighbors (no dot). We are being classified and a neighborhood caste system is being created. Which means, of course, that we are at the top echelon of neighborhood caste society. YESSSS.
A city is finally looking at annexing us and is surveying the neighborhood for people who already have code violations. Like, for instance,
- The man with 200 white homing pigeons in his backyard (housed in 6 huge birdhouses) = non-annex material.
- The people with the skateboard park in their backyard = non-annex material.
- Freddy and Christie, with their immaculate yard, house, and fence = annex material.
- But then again, we have a green dot. So I guess that blows that theory.

Anyone else have any theories?

Or better yet, has anyone else had any mysterious mailbox dottage happen in your neighborhood?

Count on a Toddler to Not Make You Read Between the Lines.

May 13, 2009 Rachel Callahan Toddlers: The Experience, Utter Silliness

Ali’s vacation withdrawals haven’t been nearly as bad as I’d feared. She’s mentioned Tennessee and being in a house with everybody a couple of times, but it really just hasn’t been a big deal.

However, one thing that has been troubling her is that her “message” from Pop somehow got erased.

You see, Pop left her a message on our answering machine sometime last summer. And nearly every day, she would listen to it multiple times while I was preparing or cleaning up from breakfast.

Of course, I could recite it by heart.

She was usually really good at hitting the “play” button and not the “erase” button, but somehow, like the fate that Gramamma’s message found a long time ago, it got erased.

She has been complaining about it all week, and I kept telling her that we’d get him to leave her a new one, somewhat halfheartedly and noncommittally, as I was always in the middle of the dishes or something when these requests would come up.

However, today she got to the point where she couldn’t take it any longer.

After trying and failing to listen to Pop, she picked up the phone, brought it to me at the sink and said imploringly, “Call and get a new Pop.”

So I called, and of course Pop AND Gramamma were happy to oblige and leave her new messages.

In her glee and joyous state at these new messages, she asked me if she could send an email to Pop.

“Sure, baby”. I pulled up the email. “What do you want to say to Pop?”

“I want to say ‘I love you Pop'”

“Okay. Type an I. . . then a space bar. . . then an L. . .”

You get the point.

Except when we got to Pop’s name, she insisted that she wanted to send Pop two O’s like she was sending him two P’s.

She’s generous like that.

So the first line of her email went like this:

I LOVEE YOU POOP

I’m sure that the feeling is mutual.

Her First Taste of Honeysuckle

May 12, 2009 Rachel Callahan Wordless Wednesday - as IF I could be wordless.

. . . and she’s been begging for “more honey juice” ever since.

Check out my other Wordless Wednesday on B-Sides.
Check out everyone else’s at 5 Minutes for Mom.

p.s. – for those of you who were going to try the cookie-willpower test on your kids, I’m waiting with baited breath to see how it went! Be sure to go back to that post and let me know the results!!

The Grand Chocolate Willpower Experiment

May 12, 2009June 23, 2011 Rachel Callahan Toddlers: The Experience

I read about a fascinating experiment on Momisodes (thanks to Angela from mommy bytes who was guest posting while Sandy was on vacation).

The basic idea is that toddlers learn the concept of willpower around the age of four. And, by testing this willpower (with the use of some sort of chocolate), you MAY be able to predict their future success in life.

Sounds sketchy, eh?

Well, the scientist Walter Mischel is the person who stumbled upon these findings, and he gave this fascinating interview on public radio about his findings.

(I used to think my husband was either an old man or a geek for liking Public Radio, but I have come love it through his exposing me to it. So I’m now either an old man or a geek also.)

Back to Walter. He only set out to test his theory that willpower develops around four years old. He did this by setting a child in a room with a cookie, and telling them that they could eat it now, but if they DIDN’T eat it, when he got back, they could have TWO cookies. He would then leave the room for twenty minutes, all while watching the kids on video. He was able to pretty well prove that four was the age of the development of willpower, and that some children definitely had more than others.

However, he found out more than he ever meant to.

He kept up with the 500 participants until current day (they’re now in their forties), and was able to see startling evidence that the children who could resist temptation at four years old actually did MUCH better in many areas of life. They had better grades in school, made over 200 points higher scores on the SAT, went to better colleges, got better jobs, and were even skinnier than the kids who could not overcome the temptation of the cookie.

His basic point is that if a person is able to have willpower to delay immediate gratification for future better things, you will do better in life. And the trait of willpower may be hardwired as early as four years old.

Just a theory, of course.

So, although she’s not four yet, I found this experiment so fascinating that I had to try it on Ali. I mean, she’s a pretty logical kid. She’ll be able to do it, right?

I didn’t have cookies, but I had chocolate. And I decided that I would not leave the room for 20 minutes (she would come find me long before that period of time elapsed), but maybe more like one or two minutes.

So here’s how our “game” went:

Hm.

So much for even leaving the room.

I’m going to wholeheartedly blame my findings in this experiment on the fact that she’s two and not four years old.

However, she will most definitely be tested again in two years.

How about you? Any takers out there to run your kids through the experiment? What do you think about Walter’s theories?

Early Monday Mornings: Week Four

May 11, 2009 Rachel Callahan Early Monday Mornings

To get caught up, go here for the introductory week, then you can visit week 2 and week 3 as well.

Mister Early has a penchant for playing with the appliances and lights.

When Mom and Dad moved back from England, they stayed with Grandmother and Granddad until they got a house. One night, everyone was hanging out in the living room. Mom and Dad’s dog, Kokinos, was laying in the floor.

All of a sudden, all of her hair stood up and she started growling very low and staring into the kitchen (at the other end of the house).

At that moment, the stove fan came on.

Mister continued his games after Grandmother and Granddad passed away.

Dad was responsible for cleaning out Granddad’s garage. It was crammed full of junk from one end to the other. One day, Nick was helping Dad. They were moving some very heavy sheets of plywood off of the wall, which had been there for years. It took both of them quite a while to get them all moved. When they finally got back to the wall, there was a mag light flashlight laying there, turned on.

My Aunt Chrissie did a lot of cleaning out of the house. Every night when she would leave the house, she would turn off all of the lights and lock up. Every morning when she came back, the lights would all be on.

Except one morning – they were still off when she arrived. She unlocked the front door, and as she walked into the living room, the lights all came on at once.

Grandmother and Granddad’s next door neighbor, Hans, bought their house. He is a good friend of our family’s and has been taking great care of it. He actually knew nothing about Mister Early until Grandmother’s wake, while we were all talking about him (due to the clock phenomenon that we had all just witnessed).

I was quite surprised he knew nothing of it, because Grandmother and Granddad were very proud of their “friend”. I guess they didn’t want him to be scared to buy the house. At any rate, he emailed me and told me of his (so far) only Mister Early encounter. I’ll let him tell his story:

HI Rachel,

I’ve got a type of Mr. Early story but put it into my ratronal framework.

After your grandmother had died and the house was empty, I finally decided to do some painting and minor repairs. One of the tasks on my list was to figure out the electrical wiring, for example, which fuses go with which plugs and lights.

This was tedious work since only the dog and I were doing the work. I would turn on a light or plug an appliance into a wall socket and go and unscrew fuses, and look for any changes. After doing this for a long day I noticed that some of the wall sconces were not working. I replaced light bulbs and fuses and thought I had everything working. In fact, I thought I had all the lights turned out when a thunderstorm rolled through the neighborhood.

While standing in the kitchen, it got dark and there was some thunder. All of a sudden, I see lights flashing in the dining room, as if someone were flipping a light switch.

I thought this is strange, perhaps I had not unscrewed the fuse, or turned the lights off. I went into the dining room, the wall sconces were flashing on and off. I thought this was creepy and quickly went and unscrewed the fuses. I thought for sure that Mr. Early had made an appearance. You know what the hair on the back of my neck did!

Subsequently I dismantled the wall sconces and rewired them and have not seen or heard from Mr. Early again.

Hans

Happy Mother’s Day! And Stuff.

May 10, 2009 Rachel Callahan The Blissfulness of Life, Utter Silliness

I hope all of the Mothers out there are having a fantastic Mother’s Day (or “Mommy’s Day”, as we explained it to Ali). And for those of you who weren’t being heathens (like us) and coming home from vacation, I hope that Church was wonderful as well.

Because on Mother’s Day, all of the Pastors in the whole world preach about how wonderful and vital and deserving of adoration and pampering and thanking profusely and bowing down to mothers are. It’s all about praising mothers and exhorting* Fathers and Children to love them more.

*Guilt tripping

But then. . . on Father’s Day? They preach a message of exhortation* to the Dads:

*Huge Guilt Trip

“How to be a better Dad”.

“What your Kids Need From You”.

“Six Ways to Show Your Family that You Love Them”.

“How Terribly Guilty You Should Be For Every Second That You’re Not Investing In Your Family’s Emotional Need for a Father”.

So, for all you Dads out there, I hope you listened to the Mother’s Day Sermons today and replaced the word “Mother” with “Father”. Because you deserve some adoration too.

Just don’t forget to tell us Mothers Happy Mother’s Day.

Oh – and I wouldn’t suggest telling your wife today “I deserve some adoration today too!!!”. Let’s just keep that piece of advice between us.

As for us, we are home from Chattanooga!

I know that Ali will be suffering majorly from PVSS* over the next few days, much like her case of PTSS after the Thanksgiving Holidays.

*Post Vacation Stress Syndrome

She has been so thrilled with the idea of staying in a house with “everybodeeee”. She is typically a late sleeper, but she does wake up and fall back asleep a lot during naps and nighttime. Usually she just cries for a second then goes back to sleep, or she opens her eyes then closes them right back, after realizing that she is not in the mood to get up yet.

However, she was having so much fun on our trip that sometime in the early hours yesterday morning, I heard her wake up, look around (yes, I heard her look around), realize that we were still on vacation, and yell “YAAAAAY!!” at the top of her lungs, while clapping.

Luckily, she was able to easily take her lazy, late sleepin’ self back to dreamy land when I told her that it was still very very night night time, and that everybodeeeee was still asleep.

Which meant we could take our lazy, late sleepin’ vacation selves back to dreamy land as well.

Ali and Eli had a blast hanging out together all weekend, and so the last vacation pictures I have to offer are of the two of them chillin’ on vacation:

Eli really wanted to pull Ali’s boingy curls (I guess he hasn’t realized that he has them too):

She really didn’t want him to.

But I finally convinced her to pat his head in return:

And then everyone was happy.
Later that day, they both wanted to join me in the “warm pool”. I found that although on the surface, it seems like a hard thing to do (hold two squirmy toddlers in a bubbly hot tub), it actually is easier than out of water because of the help from my good friend water buoyancy.
Well, that’s it from me. I hope you had an awesome Mother’s Day and fully enjoyed your uplifting and adoring sermon this morning, whether you are a Mother or a Father.

Oh – and did someone pick me up a potted plant on their way out of Church? Because I just KNOW they were giving them away to all of the Mothers today.

Caution: Not for the Faint of Heights.

May 9, 2009April 29, 2012 Rachel Callahan Free Family Vacations, The Blissfulness of Life

Today was the day to go to the Incline Railway! Besides the fact that trains are Ali’s favorite thing in the world, this is the steepest railroad in the world. Needless to say, someone was VERY excited.

Others were a BIT more sleepy about the whole thing.

However, a good ole’ train whistle always helps.

The train took a WHILE to get started, so we had plenty of time for family photo ops:

Gramamma and Pop with all of their (outside the womb) grandkids:

Ali getting dreamy about the train:

Here we go!!!!

And so we started going up. . .

up . . .

up. . .

up. . .

AND up.

Luckily, Ali definitely seems to have acquired my love for heights:
And, if you’re curious, the train doesn’t “chug” up a 72% incline. It is all on a pulley system that creaks and squeaks QUITE a bit:

When we got to the top, I had to get one of my favorite childhood candies from the gift shop:

However, it wasn’t nearly as good as it was when I was a kid, so I gave it to a kid so that it could be fully appreciated:

We went to Point Park while we were at the top:

Which truly IS a point. With amazingly no guardrails or walls.

After naptime, it was time to enjoy the lake. Ali had been BEGGING to get in the water, so she was quite excited to run down to the lake:

Not QUITE as excited to get eaten by a green floatie monster, but hey – it’s worth it to get in the lake.

Chris, being the wonderful Daddy he is, and normally liking a good cold swim, wasn’t QUITE prepared for HOW cold this swim was going to be. He squealed higher and louder than I’ve ever heard him do when he got in. It was, after all, after 5pm, and a cloudy day. By the time he got around to the dock, his face was literally purple:

Ali got in with him for all of 2.36 seconds. Long enough for me to snap one picture of how extremely cold she found it:

She was completely silent and still for longer than I’ve ever seen after she got out.

Lesson learned: cold water silences toddlers.

Layla and Shadow were still enjoying fetching things out of the lake. Layla, however, preferred to wait ’til Shadow got back to shore and then would try to steal it and take the glory of returning it.

Ali was much happier just sitting with her feet hanging off the edge, but safely OUT of the water.

Before filling up their kiddie pool, JC decided to use it as a float. Ali found it. . . interesting. . .

But Eli loved it.

Ali sat like a grumpy old man with Pop on the bench. . .

And didn’t appreciate Eli’s intrusion.

Eli, however, was quite thrilled with the pool.

Ali was happy to stay as far away from potentially cold water as possible.

However, the allure of pouring with cups finally got the best of her. We were trying to get her to pour water on Eli, and she considered it. . .
. . .but couldn’t bring herself to do it. I guess she didn’t get my prankster genes after all.

She was QUITE happy, however, when we suggested getting in the “warm pool”:

For dinner, JC and Lindsay made a low country boil on the porch:

After JC and Chris drained it. . .

And poured it on the traditional newspaper on the table,
We all enjoyed it IMMENSELY.

Ali and Eli enjoyed a little more porch time playing train,

When Ali finally begged “I want to go to bed now.”

That’s the sign of a good, full day of vacation.