Rachel Callahan

Almost Two, Going on Twenty-Seven.

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories I'm No Videographer, Toddlers: The Experience

Two Quick Reminders:
1. This weekend (and Monday) is your last chance to enter the Scavenger Hunt! You can enter by simply commenting on this post, enter again by commenting on this post, and get up to 14 more entries by playing the scavenger hunt. Don’t forget to play! The prizes are great!

2. Be sure to check A Dose of Humor today – especially you homeschoolers out there! It’s by Octamom, a homeschooling Mom of eight. Due to the fact that I spent the majority of my homeschool career in my jammies doing my school in bed, I can COMPLETELY relate to this post!!

We took breakfast to Sunday School, so Ali has been enjoying the leftover Panera bagels and cream cheese for breakfast this week. I cut up her bagel and give her a dollop of cream cheese (or “dip-dip”) for her to use.

One morning, while I was looking away to fix a bagel for myself, she decided to cut out the bagel middle man and just eat the cream cheese right off of her tray:
I just left her like that until breakfast was over, because really, what’s the point of cleaning a toddler’s face twice during one meal?

All that to set up why her face is creamy in this video.

She has loved talking about how old everyone is ever since Daddy told her on Sunday that she is now “Almost Two” instead of one. So here we are discussing ages. Hope no one wanted it kept a secret. .

It’s Hard Work Keeping Secrets From Toddlers.

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Deception: A Parent's Best Friend, Toddlers: The Experience, Utter Silliness

Chris got us a movie to watch Wednesday night to kick off our long holiday weekend, and he was telling me about it while we were getting Ali ready for bed.

Then he said excitedly, yet secretively: “And I also got some more letter-after-O letter-after-O’s.”

(pause). Me: “P?? You got some pee pee???”

(Thoughtful pause). Chris: “Okay. I got some letter-after-L letter-after-L’s.”

Oooooh. M & M’s.

Thankful Thursday – Thanksgiving Edition

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Thankful Thursday

Thankful Thursday is a weekly column where I post what I am thankful about that week, and you have the opportunity (via your blog linked into this post OR via a comment on this blog) to share your thankful thought for the week.

Hello everyone!!

I hear echoes – I know that everyone is pigging out with their families and in general being thankful and that no one is reading blogs today, but I feel the need to post anyway- how could I possibly skip Thankful Thursday on Thanksgiving?!?!? So I’ll just keep typing in spite of the clicking of the keys echoing off of the blog walls.

Today is Thanksgiving, and I’ve been unsure all week about what to write for Thankful Thursday. Not that I have nothing to be thankful for – I have EVERYTHING to be thankful for – I just didn’t want to sound – you know – “Thanksgiving-y”. Rehearsed. Predictable. Cliche. You know. I even prayed about it. Yes, I prayed about it.

And in the end, all that I concluded was this: Thanksgiving is about worshiping. Worshiping God in appreciation for EVERYTHING that He has blessed me with – because I am nothing without Him. Everything that I have, everything that I am, everyone in my life is from Him. And for that He deserves my continuous worship. So I leave you with this song:

OK – your turn!! What are you thankful for today? Leave it in a comment, or if you have a blog, write a post on your blog and link it in with Mr. Linky (at the bottom of this post), and you can have the pleasure of welcoming my wonderful readers to your site!

To use Mr. Linky to link to your blog, just type in your name in the first slot, then copy and paste the URL of your blog post in the second one and click “Enter” – then there will be a link to your post from my blog! ***be sure to put the link to your actual “Thankful Thursday” post – not just your main blog URL.***

Pre-Thanksgiving Haze

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories A Day in the Life, Weird Strange and True

Well, I figure that everyone has left blog-world and is headed for Thanksgiving world, so that means that I can write a completely randomly generated post, right?

Good.

Because I (finally) got Ali’s cold, and my mind is only working on the random setting. I started to feel like I was getting sick on Saturday, and it’s just been a slow progression. The one nice thing is that at least the phlegm is coming UP now. Maybe when I get over the cold, the phlegm that’s been hanging around so long will get the hint and leave with it!

Anyway, so it’s been a hazy week – I made the mistake of taking cold meds yesterday morning and literally and quite unintentionally dozed while Ali played. Not a good thing. But luckily for me she was completely mesmerized by the Christmas tree and the “What does God want for Christmas?” boxes that Lydia gave us that she was quite contained. But since then I’ve been laying off the cold medicines to ensure that there are no Mommyless toddlers running around.

I’ve been trying to plow through my list of to-do’s to get ready for Thanksgiving (we have out of town family staying with us and Thanksgiving dinner at our house tomorrow for BOTH of our families combined, which will be a dream come true for Ali – everyone she loves at ONE TABLE!!), but it’s been a bit hard to get anything accomplished while walking around in a sick daze.

Luckily for me and possibly unluckily for them, I feel very “at home” and comfortable with all of our family and am not going to stress if everything doesn’t get perfectly cleaned and prepared.

I did at least get SOME stuff crossed off of my list, like the ever-important “de-ladybug house” item (right below “de-clutter house” item which hasn’t gotten done yet). Am I the only person that has the mass murder of ladybugs on their Thanksgiving to-do list? By the way, for those of you curious, the death toll is up to 169. Ali is getting great lessons in higher counting by watching Mommy serial kill ladybugs. Thank goodness she knows who is responsible for them now – if she sees one, she says “Mommy get the ladybugs!!” – much better than when she was eating them last year.

Anyway, I did take some cough medicine this morning in the attempt to clear up my throat enough to croak out words. However, I’m wondering what was in that cough medicine, because I saw the strangest thing while we were out and about. It was one of those things that you see and you think “that CAN’T be what it looks like. . .” My Mom used to tell me that when she had her contacts out, her eyes would trick her into seeing the strangest stuff, and she actually missed it when she got glasses because she didn’t see the odd things anymore. I think it was like taking LSD without the drugs. Anyway, that’s what it felt like.

Back to what I saw. We were coming up a busy road, and there was a car stopped in the road with the passenger door open. There was a big black crow was standing there by the door, and it hopped in the car and then they closed the passenger door and drove off.

Strange.

Maybe I took 2 TABLESPOONS instead of 2 teaspoons of cough medicine.

Wordless Wednesday – You Know You’re a Blogger When. . .

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Wordless Wednesday - as IF I could be wordless.

. . .instead of rescuing your toddler from a potentially scary situation, you yank out your camera to be sure and capture it because of what a great blog it would make.

They were obsessed with the sprinkler spigots:
They thought that they would make a great seat. . .
I had my camera ready, just in case a MOST bloggable moment happened. . .

. . . but alas, no bum-soaking geysers.

Check out everyone else’s WW posts at 5 Minutes for Mom!!
Check out my other WW post at B-Sides!

I Swear That This Sweater Didn’t Look Straight from 1986 When it was Hanging on the Rack. . .

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Just My Luck, Utter Silliness

When paired with the rest of the coordinating “Children’s Place” fall collection, this sweater looked hip, colorful, and cool. It was too big for Ali when I bought it, so I tried it again last week and it fit.

Only now, the memory of it’s coordinating collection has faded from my mind and all that I can see are the grotesquely stiff shoulders that totally look like baby shoulder pads.

And the color palette – a bit 80’s neon.

And the Zig Zags remind me of my “Crush of the 80’s” 1984 Album:
(Sad thing is, Argyle is back in style now too.)

Ok so now that you’re dying to see, here’s the sweater:
As you can see, Ali is really playing up the “New Woman of the 80’s Power Professional” by looking all serious and having Mommy’s dangly earrings hanging from the top of her earlobes. I mean, does that not look like shoulder-pad city?!

It’s one modernizing saving grace it is that it is really long.

Oh wait. Long sweaters were “like, totally rad” in the 80’s too.

All she needs now is a pair of stirrup pants and anklet boots.
And maybe some frizzy hair in a side ponytail held by a Scunci.

Ali has also been practicing her 80’s makeup application skills:
Mom didn’t understand why Ali kept putting her candy lipstick on her nose. I had to explain to Mom that when Ali gets a cold, Chris puts chapstick on the end of her nose at night to counteract the chafing from us wiping her nose all day.

Therefore, Ali thinks lipstick goes on her nose. With her garish makeup application skills and Saved-By-The-Bell-esque sweater, she would have “like, totally” fit right into the 80’s.

Umbrella Laws

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories On a more serious note. . ., Thoughts about Faith

Ali and I went out to Mom’s today to visit for a while. On the interstate on the way, I saw several cop cars with tractor trailers pulled over, and several more policemen staked out. I figured that they had received a tip that there would be drug shipments down that stretch of highway today, as has happened before.

Which started this whole long rabbit trail of thoughts in my head. Apparently Ali was quite entertained with her sunglasses and gummies (or “yummies” as she calls them) for me to get this far down the track with my train of thoughts, but here goes.

I started off thinking about the drug tipster. What made them want to tip off the police? What was their motivation? They must have really felt strongly about it to risk their lives by turning in drug traffickers.

Then I thought – wait – maybe not. Why do I assume all drug traffickers are also violent and vindictive? Couldn’t there be some peaceful druglords out there?

So I then started thinking about why drugs and violence go together, and it hit me – of course – because they are doing an illegal operation (trafficking drugs) – it’s not like they can call the cops and complain if someone wrongs them. Like, say, stealing drugs, or double crossing them and turning them in.

So because they are breaking one law, they are in effect taking themselves out from under the protection of the police and find themselves in situations where they feel as though they HAVE to play “police” for themselves.

Which leads to revenge. And guns. And violence. And murder.

These people may have started out as peaceful people who happened to find themselves dealing a little drugs on the side to only find themselves a few years later as full blown murderers, because of the fast track that they put themselves on by breaking ONE law.

Then I thought about how this applies to the Christian life as well. How many times have I made one “small” wrong decision, and in doing so had to make worse decisions to “fix it” or cover it up? It was quite convicting. God reminded me point blank that:

When we remove ourselves from God’s umbrella of protection and blessing, we open ourselves up to the dangers of the world and to feeling like we have to take things into our own hands. This can be a very quick, slippery slope of worse and worse sins until we find ourselves somewhere that we never imagined that we would end up.

God’s laws are given to us for our own good – they are guidelines on how to live life the BEST way.

It’s not about living life the “righteous” way.

It’s not a checklist so that we can say we’re good little boys and girls.

They all make sense and make life “work”. They are for our good, for our blessing, and for our protection. When we ignore them, we automatically remove ourselves from the covering of God’s protection and open ourselves up to greater sin and greater danger.

How many God-following girls have made a mistake that ultimately led them to an abortion clinic, about to do something that they thought they would never do – all in an attempt to “fix” or “cover up” the problems caused by stepping out of God’s umbrella?

How many God-following men have handled their family’s money unwisely, and in desperation have made the decision to embezzle money to try and “fix” their problem?

These are just a couple of examples that I could think of that illustrate how one “smaller” sin can lead to multiple “greater” sins as we try to play “police”, or worse, play God.

The good news is that although the government may not be “forgiving” to drug dealers who turn themselves in, God is always forgiving to sinners who “turn themselves in” – when we come to Him in repentance. That doesn’t mean that our consequences will be erased, but we will be back under His umbrella. And we are forgiven. AND we have His help, protection, peace, mercy, love, and blessing to aid us in dealing with those consequences, and with making the right choices the next time around.

Deck the Halls With Thrills for Ali. . .

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories I would NEVER take too many pictures. . ., Toddlers: The Experience

Hi there, other BooMama loyalists!! I was a bit ahead of the curve posting my holiday deco, but if it’s just the same with you, I’d like to share it with you anyway! So this is my post from November 23rd:

Although I despise the movie “Christmas Vacation” with every bone in my body, I am proud to be married to someone who likes to decorate for Christmas as much as Clark Griswold. Chris, unfortunately for me, LOVES the movie and insists that we watch it at least once every Christmas (I usually find something distracting to do while it’s on. Maybe this year I’ll be blogging!).

Anyway, all that to say, Chris starts planning his lighting extravaganza somewhere in October. Usually it is when the Crimson Tide starts doing poorly. There have been many a year that he came straight home from a disappointing football game and consoled himself by fiercely hanging lights on the outside of the house.

It’s kind of his way of putting football behind him and looking forward to a more joyful season.

However, being that we are still miraculously (and quite undeservedly in my highly informed opinion) ranked #1 in the nation, he hasn’t had quite the energy for lighting endeavors as usual. Which means that we just got our lights up yesterday. AND he didn’t double the amount of lights from the previous year (which is also part of his football-recovery-twelve-step -program).

So yesterday while Ali was napping, we had fun getting the outside Christmas lights up.I was actually the person who added a new “feature” this year (which made Chris beam with pride). I hung cheap, plastic, 90%-off-after-Christmas-markdown brightly colored, non-breakable Christmas ornaments on our leafless dogwood tree. I like it because it adds daytime decor to the mix.

Here’s a picture (it was dusk by the time I got done; I’ll have to try and take a better one later):
While I was up on the ladder hanging the high ones, I was intrigued by the reflection in the bulb of me, the ladder, the yard, and our neighbor’s houses. So I attempted something which I usually fail at – an artsy shot:
Oh – and I used the small ornaments left over from my tree project to string up on the mantle:
Back to outside.
Here’s the nighttime finished product of Chris’ lighting:
He really wanted to light the upper eaves as well this year – and I have a feeling he still might – but he couldn’t quite figure out how. But here’s the proud artist with his creation thus far:
When Ali woke up from her nap (actually, when I woke her up at 5:30pm!!), she was THRILLED!! However, she wasn’t overcome enough to not beg us to blow bubbles also:
Here she is checking out the lights in the dark:
Then we got the Christmas tree out and let her help us find the right branches and put it together:
We used to get a real tree – the most beautiful sort – but when I wanted to get Oreo, Chris’ deal was that we could have a cat if we could have a fake tree. Something about carrying it and watering it and vacuuming after it and getting rid of it took the magic out of it for him. . . .

And we got our our Christmas knick-knacks. Oh, Ali loved them. She had to have played this one at least 518 times:
This morning when Ali woke up and we came to the top of the stairs, she looked down and said, “LIGHTS!!! ‘CITING!!!”.

Tonight we decorated the tree. Amanda came over (as is tradition) and helped. When she got there, Ali pointed to the tree and said “Lights on it!!” at least 10 times.
Ali “helped” Daddy run the lights:
She LOVED looking at each ornament. Here she is inspecting Bob and Larry:
Putting Ornaments up:
Getting help from Amanda:
Ali and Mommy:
The finished product!!
We are now ready for Christmas Thanksgiving festivities!

Odd Toddlers on Dreaded Meds

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Toddlers: The Experience

Ali has had a pretty bad cough for a couple of weeks now, compliments of a cold that just won’t quite go away. I took her to the doctor last week to make sure that it hadn’t turned into anything worse (since I tend to get Sinus Infections and Bronchitis from pretty much any cold), but after doing bloodwork and an exam, Dr. Amy really just thought that she had gotten another cold before fully getting over the first one.

Dr. Amy prescribed Ali some cold medicine, but it is the kind that makes her super crabby. So obviously, I use it as sparingly as possible. Pretty much only for bedtime, and occasionally during a nap if she is coughing a lot (and now I’m starting to doubt if it does anything for her cough). At Wednesday’s naptime, she woke up coughing after an hour and a half, which is when she usually wakes up halfway through her nap anyway. I decided that she had long enough left in her nap to sleep off the crankiness, so I decided to give her the dreaded med.

However, she took a toddler-napping-u-turn and didn’t fall back asleep.

So when I got her up, she was Miss Crankypants. Amanda came over, and she noticed too. She tactfully said, “I don’t think Ali feels good. . .”, and so I explained about the dreaded med.

I finally put Ali in my lap and had an eyeball to eyeball talk with her, telling her that she needed to have a happy heart and ask sweetly for things, etc etc.

When we finished our little talk, she hit the couch forcefully out of frustration.

I asked her, “Did that help?”

She nodded assuredly and said, “Feel better.”

She got up and walked away for a few minutes, and then all of a sudden her conscience took over and she had waves of repentance. She started apologizing to everything in sight.

“I sorry, Mommy.”
“I sorry, Amanda.”
“I sorry, Oro.” (Oreo the cat whom she had chewed out a few minutes earlier for stepping on her shapes)
“I sorry, Thomas.” (Thomas the Train – not sure what offense she caused with him)
“I sorry, Ali.” (I guess she was apologizing to herself for getting in trouble??)

And then she was all better.

Toddlers are odd little creatures.

Satan the Squirrel: Quantum of Solace

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Just My Luck, Satan the Squirrel, Utter Silliness, Weird Strange and True

So what could be worse than a squirrel chewing through my shower wall while I was in the shower? The squirrel coming back, of course. Once a squirrel has shown that he is able to EAT your HOUSE at will, there is nothing that chills your bones as hearing that horrible chewing noise.

Termites? That’s nuthin’ compared to Satan the Squirrel eating your house!

(If you’re totally lost so far, this is the Sequel to my Satan the Squirrel post on Wednesday. If you missed it, you may want to start there.)

Fast forward a year to late 2006. I was QUITE great with child when we started hearing the scratching again. This time on the other side of the house, in our bedroom.

It made us twitch with horror and nervousness all over again.

Chris got an animal trapping cage (it always struck me as ironic that the cage’s brand name was “HavAHart”, which in our case was not at all true. We were just trying anything that we could at that point to get rid of him. I mean – if we’d caught him alive, we wouldn’t have trusted letting him go in even the remotest location of Alabama – he’d find his way back, just like he did every winter). He fixed StS a delicacy of Peanut Butter, Bird Seed, and other secret ingredients (he found the recipe off of some squirrel’s gourmet cooking site). Every night, he would climb up in the attic hopefully, and when disappointed, move the cage to a different part of the attic, slightly alter his hors d’oeuvres, or anything else he could think of in hopes of a better catch.

Unfortunately, neither the cage nor another effort that included a box of mothballs making our house have an unbearable stench tricked StS in the least.

It was mid-December when it all came to a head.

Ali is due January 7th. I’m already having contractions on and off (desperately hoping that they are more than they were), and we’re taking our childbirth classes at the hospital, learning all sorts of stuff about the process that we would rather not know.

We get home on Friday night from our class and head to bed around 11. I am having more contractions than I usually have had, and am REALLY hoping that they mean something. I’m laying in bed, paying close attention to my contractions, listening to Satan the Squirrel scratch while Chris is brushing his teeth. Then I happen to look up. I groan from the deepest deep of my gut. There are two holes in the ceiling to the left of the bed.

Editor’s note: Not only are there two holes in the ceiling, but these holes are in the EXACT spot that we had roof leakage three different times, which means that Chris painstakingly re-popcorned, primed, and painted three times. Why of all places StS had to pick THIS spot which we already hated, I will never know. Probably because his first name was Satan.

NOOOOOOOOOO. Dear God, do I have to tell my husband about this???

I finally call out meekly, “Hey baby, please don’t freak out. . . .”

He runs into the room. “What?? Are you going into labor???? Did your water break???”

“Noooo. . . . ” , and I let my eyes travel upward to the ceiling.

The blood drains from his face. I see him planning a military operation in his head. He promptly leaves (at 11pm at night while I’m still contracting) and heads to Wal-Mart.

This can’t be good.

The poor checkout lady. I bet she had to file some sort of “suspicious patron” report.

He comes home around midnight with the following catch:

  • 3 cans of Great Stuff
  • Pellet Gun
  • Bullets
  • Super Stout Rat Poison
  • Bird Seed

He decides to go with what he knows best for his first try. He gets a can of Great Stuff, holds it into the hole in the ceiling (where we STILL hear StS scratching), and empties the WHOLE can of noxiously odorous, ozone killing neon orange foam into the ceiling.

The scratching stops.

We both envision StS, arms and legs and tail extended, frozen in place in the middle of a foam casket. We chuckle evilly and fall asleep, having happy dreams of sugarplums and dead squirrels.

The next morning before headed go back to our birthing class, Chris got up on the ladder to check out what he did.

Turns out, miraculously, that his unloading of the can actually PUSHED StS back out of the hole in the eave and had BLOCKED his entrance back into the house.

It was quite a lucky shot!!

So Chris patched the NEW awning hole, patched the dang bedroom ceiling, and we went to a voodoo doctor and bought twenty voodoo-squirrel-dolls in which we tortured every night before going to bed, and we never saw StS again.

Ok, we didn’t go to a voodoo doctor. But apparently Chris’ great skill with orange noxious foam got around in the squirrel community and they quit bothering us.

But despite the fact that we live 20 miles away from that battlezone, every time we see a squirrel, we look deep into their beady eyes, wondering. . . are YOU Satan the Squirrel?!?!