Rachel Callahan

a "huts" day

September 4, 2008 Rachel Callahan Toddlers: The Experience

Ali has been a bit down today because, as she has been telling me all day, “mouf huts”. Also, to confuse the matter, a “tummy huts”, a couple “nose huts”, and a few “head huts” thrown in for good measure.

Ali is not one to cry wolf with the “hut” claim. Well, except for when she hurts her arm doing something and so gets a kiss on it, then she wants a kiss on her head too, so she says “head huts”.

Also, to further prove her “huts”, she had a 100.3 fever at naptime (just a couple of hours after some tylenol for all of her hurts), and a 101.3 fever after naptime. Not good.

Oh, and her first ever throw up incident at lunch. It certainly seemed like a choke-throw-up, but she’s literally never thrown up, since the cottage cheesy days of infanthood, so no matter the cause, it was strange.

Needless to say, this has all made her rather sad today. So when she woke up from her nap and asked me “paint piggies?”, I wholeheartedly agreed. She hadn’t asked again since her first toenail painting, and, what better time than when she’s moving rather sluggishly anyway? Obviously, she knows what it takes to make a girl feel better: primping and shopping (which we had done earlier in the day)!!!

I explained the rules again about sitting still and no touching until they’re dry, and she followed them very well. She was still quite mesmerized when I finished her toes, so I offered to paint her fingernails too. She looked at me with wonder and said, “paint fingers??”. Because she’s certainly never seen Mommy’s fingernails painted.

So I told her again that she would have to be VERY still. I started on the first one, and she said “PAINT MOUF????” and puckered up. I laughed. AND simultaneously made a mental note: Fingernail Polish MUST stay out of reach.

However, she seemed to recoup some of her energy and started wiggling around and turning all which-a-ways, which only allowed us to get two fingernails painted:
But hey – at this rate, we can have all of her nails painted by Church on Sunday!! Maybe.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure we’ll be taking a trip to the doctor in the morning. The nurse said that I should bring her in, since 101.3 (while on Tylenol) is higher than it should be for teething. She doesn’t have any other symptoms, and so I’m dreading going in.

Reason #1: I am pretty sure that my doctor doesn’t work on Thursdays.

Reason #2: Last time she had an unexplainable fever, my doctor also wasn’t there, and one of her partners had us come back three times in a week, gave her two different shots for two different things, had the nurses do catheters on two different days (which included the most 15 miserable moments of mine and Ali’s life while she couldn’t get it to work right), multiple diagnoses, and he finally admitted that he didn’t know what was wrong with her.

So. Mommies out there: What do you do when your toddler only has a fever? Is it worth taking them in? Any tips on how to make the visit more directed and pointed?

Ugh. I’m not looking forward to tomorrow. I’m just hoping my doctor has changed her schedule to Thursdays since we last went in.

p.s. – Our shopping trip today was for fall clothes at Children’s Place today – they are having a really good sale on fall stuff. We got all kinds of cute stuff!! So if you’re looking to get ahead of the curve and buy a few things at a time in preparation for fall, I suggest going to C.P. this week!

The Yummiest Time of the Year. . .

September 3, 2008 Rachel Callahan Delicious Greekness, Shamelessly Plugging Away

I look forward to the middle of September starting sometime around March. .because. . . .Next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday is. . . . . .

Greek Festival!!!

It is downtown at the Greek Orthodox Church. You can click on my annoyingly blinking announcement above for details, directions, etc.

If you have never been, by all means you should – the food at the Greek Festival is somehow better than all of the Greek Restaurants in town. It is amazing!! And super fun!!

I will be eating there as much as possible over it’s three days – believe me – it’s worth it.

I would like to organize a Mommies and kiddos (And grandparents, if they’d like to come) lunch there next week. I don’t want to publish the details on my blog, because, well, that just seems unwise. SO – if you want to join us, comment on this entry, email me or facebook me and I will give you the whens and wheres. Now let me warn you – It IS chaotic to go through the line and get your food and all – but well worth it. And Ali and I can get there a bit early to scope out some tables if we know who will be joining us.

Here are some of the wonderful delicacies that they will have:

Pites – Four filo triangles filled with feta cheese mixture or feta and spinach mixture.
Dolmathes – Grape leaves stuffed with seasoned rice and topped with lemon.
Souvlakia – Marinated lamb skewered and grilled on an open fire.
Greek Chicken – Greek-style chicken at its finest, baked and basted in a marinade of olive oil, lemon juice, and oregano.
Pasticho – a wonderful combination with layers of macaroni, ground beef in a Greek tomato sauce, topped with a layer of delicious cream bechamel sauce.
Gyro Sandwich – Grilled slices of seasoned beef and lamb topped with lettuce and Greek tsaziki sauce and rolled in warm pita bread.
Greek Salad – Traditional Greek salad tossed with Greek dressing and topped with feta, calamata olives, and salonika peppers.

As well as these pastries:

Baklava – Layer upon layer of buttered filo and ground pecans bathed in a honey syrup.
Chocolate Baklava – Classic baklava dipped in chocolate.
Almond Crescent – Butter cookie with almonds.
Kataifa – Shredded wheat filled with nuts and honey.
Melomakarona – Honey and nut cookie topped with chopped pecans.
Kourambethes – Greek wedding cookie sprinkled with powdered sugar.
Koulourakia – Butter coffee twists.
Loukoumathes – Greek fried donuts, dipped in warm honey and sprinkled with cinammon.

. . . and although they do have much dancing and greek music, there is no belly dancing. Sorry.

If you don’t have my email address or facebook, respond to this post that you’re interested in coming, and we’ll get in touch!!

The Taubl’s Umbrella

September 3, 2008 Rachel Callahan Homeschooling: Not just for the socially awkward anymore., Shamelessly Plugging Away

OH MY GOODNESS.

I don’t normally do TV show posts, but the Taubls deserve one tonight!!!

I hope you waded through the silly dancers, drag queen opera singers, and corny magicians to hear my favorite famous homeschoolers, the Taubls, tonight on America’s Got Talent. They absolutely blew me away!! Despite a tiny bit of shaky vocals at the beginning, their song gave me chills at least four times, and I don’t get chills easily!!

They “contemporized” up a bit and did “Umbrella” by Rihanna – about 100 times better than Rihanna did it, in my opinion! They focused heavily on vocals rather than instruments, but their seven part harmony was well worth the sacrifice.

Here’s the entire video of their segment (with some obvious loss in video and audio quality, but hey – being able to get this on YouTube half an hour after it aired is amazing in and of itself:

We’ll find out tomorrow night if they make the 50% cut – I’m pretty sure they will, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed!!

Also notable: firy baton twirling guy. I especially liked this guy since I remember finding my Mom’s fire batons from her High School days in her closet when I was little. I was always mesmerized by them, but for some reason she wouldn’t let me light them. Anyway, Mom – you should be impressed by this guy, and so as soon as I can find a video of him, I’ll send it to you!

We missed her, as is evidenced by the vast amount of photos.

September 2, 2008 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, I would NEVER take too many pictures. . ., Toddlers: The Experience

First of all: To my Aunts and Cousins who will be checking this blog for a thorough pictorial documentation of the family picnic: Forgive me because it seems that we took more pictures of our own child than of the picnic. We missed her. What can I say? Maybe Lindsay was more unbiased than we were. But we did manage to get a few pics of some of the other adorable kiddos (and adults!).

Here are a few pictures from Labor Day and today.

Yesterday morning we went on a family bike ride in and around the quaint, FLAT neighborhoods of old Trussville, then played at the Trussville park. Here are Ali and I after our bike ride: happy girls sharing our water!!
A special kiss for Daddy at the park:
Yesterday afternoon, we had a Zannis family picnic at my parent’s house. It was a blast! And all of the cousins had such a wonderful time playing together. The following are pics from it:
Ali got to hold Eli for the first time:
Studying him intently:
She kept saying “all done Eli” and trying to scoot out from under him. When I finally let her go, the pride of what she had done kicked in. She immediately started beaming and saying “Ali hold Eli!! Ali hold Eli!!”

Dad taking all of the kids for a ride in Granddad’s Model T. Can you tell it was a photo op?
Coming back from the ride. . .
Ali looking a bit windblown:
Coloring time!!
Very proud of herself for something. .
Ali coloring with Samuel and Parker!
“I can melt your heart even with a blue chalk mustache. . . “
Trying to feed Ali. Chris apparently thought that this looked awkward enough to be a photo op.
My daughter is such a graceful eater.
Eating “Blueberries and dip” – Blueberry Crisp with Ice Cream.
Pop and Eli – Eli looks a bit confused.
We were trying to get Ali to kiss Eli.
“She’s going to do WHAT to me?!?!?!”
Ali refused, fake coughing to pretend she was too sick to kiss the baby. Eli is relieved.
Pretty Parker with pretty pink chalk makeup.
Adorable Sophie. . .
Also with pretty pink chalk makeup.
Ali driving “Pop’s Old Car”.
Ali showing us what the bunny rabbit says:
Playing “weeee” in the “big girl chair”.
Today we went to the park with Ashley and AJ. Ali was so glad to see AJ again!! AJ wasn’t at Church Sunday, and Mom said that Ali about had a “come apart” when she got to the nursery and found that there was no AJ (she had been chanting “Play AJ” from the time they got on the road going to the Church – she knew what was coming!).
Here they are, happy to be together again, swinging!
Ali being silly:A best friend’s kiss:
“Petting AJ” – it looks like she’s rubbing her belly.
Driving the “Pop’s Old Car” at the park.
So yes, although we had a WONDERFUL time in Atlanta, it sure is good to be home with Ali again!

Football (Finally)

September 1, 2008 Rachel Callahan Football and I have a Complicated Relationship

So yes, the main reason for our trip was the football game, and yes, I’m just now getting around to blogging about it. But COME ON. . . with the other two adventures we had this weekend, who could help but put football off for a couple of days???

Which means, if it is Tuesday morning and you are one of those people who read my blog while (pretending to) work and so therefore missed all weekend because you weren’t (pretending to) work, I highly recommend reading Saturday and Sunday’s blogs first. I promise you won’t regret it.

Now, if you’re reading this football blog in hopes of a play-by-play analysis of the game, you WILL be disappointed. This is a girl’s-view-of-football. Sorry – it’s the best I can do.

This was a monumental game for me, because:
a) it was the start of my tenth season of attending the games. Hard to believe. And yes, I do know what a first down is. Actually, I learned that during the second season. Now I even can pick out a foul or two before Chris explains it to me!!
b) this was my first game away from Bryant Denny or Legion Field – fun!
c) this was mine AND Chris’ first 50/50 split game (where each team gets half the tickets) which made for a fun atmosphere.

So. Let’s start with the important facts.
#1 best feature of the game:
The Ceiling. AKA Air Conditioning!! I actually got cold at a football game in AUGUST!! How cool is that?!?!!?
#2 (close second): Cup holders!!! No kicked over drinks raining down on my legs from the row behind me!!
#3: Rows wide enough to get by people without stepping on their feet. Two years ago when I was super pregnant, I think I bumped every person on our row at Bryant-Denny with poor little Ali at least 3 times a game, due to having to go to the ladies room so often. It was bad.

OK. Now that we’ve got the top three out of the way, back to the story.

We find our section and Chris escorts me to our row, then heads back up to get us cokes. I sit in my assigned seat, #6. However, I quickly made the executive decision to swap seats with Chris in order to sit next to Mister Octogenarian rather than sitting next to already-drunk-frat-boy-named-Will who was very eager to get to know me. I swapped just in time too – I was just barely out of reach of his uncoordinated grasp when he tried to grab me to dance as “Sweet Home Alabama” came on.

Phew.

Luckily, Mister 80-year-old did no such thing. He DID, however, surprise me and whip out a Blackberry to email someone several times during the game. Old people are getting younger every day. Mammaw, I’m getting you a Blackberry next Christmas. Not this Christmas, because you’re getting a Wii.

And, by the way, Frat-Boy-Will was drinking beer – served from the stadium!!! I thought this was against the rules in College Football. Apparently not. I gave this some thought and hypothesized that maybe it would actually keep all of the college students from getting as drunk if they can buy beer at the stadium, because they’re not smuggling in a purse, bra, hip flask, and pocket full of Jack Daniel’s Minis. Then I happened to look under the chair in front of me.
Guess not.

Now for a few fashion observations:

I believe that these Alabama girls may have gotten outfit ideas from the Greek Belly Dancers.
. . .And these Clemson girls escaped from Dragon*Con.
Oh yes!! And here’s a picture of Chris and I – be sure to notice my new shirt that is going to be famous, thanks to crazie-t-shirt-maker-who-photographed-it-so-that-he-can-sell-the-idea!!
If you’re wondering what is so innovative about my shirt, the white part is underneath the red, and the red is cut out and stitched around the white. Hard to explain, as the crazie said).

Here’s a picture of the real Million Dollar Band (as opposed to the crazie version) and the Clemson band playing the National Anthem together:
OK. Here’s a pic of the game:
Obviously, it was a great game and had many moments to jump up and scream. Or, just scream anyway, as it seemed that everyone but me wanted to stand up the whole game. I stood a lot, but also sat and watched the jumbo-tron sometimes, which elicited this snipy, sarcastic remark from the lady in front of me: “You REALLY like football, huh?”. To which I replied, “Of course! Just not quite as much as all of you do.”

I also spent a good bit of time trying to spot Barkley’s husband and Dad, who were also there. I texted Barkley and asked where they were sitting. She responded: “In the Alabama Endzone four rows above the Chick-Fil-A sign”. Did I mention that this was the Chick-Fil-A bowl??? The word “Chick-Fil-A” was repeated approximately 357 times in that stadium. But it was a fun diversion to search for them when I got bored with Football (several times).

I was pretty sure I had found him, thanks to the 15x zoom on my camera (third guy on the second row with the dirty white hat, tilted back screaming). . .
. . .but began to doubt myself when I got this picture of him later in the game. . .
Whaddya think, Bark?? Looked like him to me. But alas, after the game we walked over there, and close-up, no luck. Definitely not Jeremy.

Oh well, I tried.

At halftime, there was an marriage request:
I love how he felt like he needed to sign his first and last name. Just in case Stefanie thought it was another Jeff asking her to marry him.

However, she said yes.
This incident reminded me once again to thank Chris for not proposing to me at an Alabama game.

During the fourth quarter, Chris was above thrilled (he was hoarse by the end of the first). He finally quit biting his nails and chewing on his gotee nervously, and was elatedly comfortable in our victory (and that Clemson wasn’t going to come back miraculously thanks to Alabama choking), so he wanted a shirt to celebrate. Being the kind, generous, bored-with-the-game wife that I was, I offered to go get him a shirt:
And. . . he had to take pics of the difference in the amount of Alabama and Clemson fans still in the stadium with 3 1/2 minutes to go:
Of course, there was much cheering and jeering and chanting at the few, poor Clemson fans that were left. I’m not sure why they stayed to take that punishment, but I salute you, glutton-for-punishment-Clemson-fans.

. . . and the crazies descended upon Atlanta.

September 1, 2008May 4, 2011 Rachel Callahan I'm a Glutton for Adventure, Quirky quirky quirkiness, Weird Strange and True

No, no no. I’m not talking about these crazies:I will talk about the football game in my next post.

No, there were other crazies in Atlanta this weekend. Crazies that made all of the tailgating, facepainted, Bear Bryant and Denny Chimes Tattooed, Toilet Paper/Tide Box wearing, Screaming and high-fiving total stranger-Alabama fans look like boring accountants (such as myself – the accountant part, that is).

Yes. It’s true.

It all started Friday night. When we were on our way to our Greek Dinner Adventure, we noticed a whole bunch of people dressed up in wild costumes waiting around the block of a large building. We figured some new, out-there reality show was auditioning.

Then, Saturday morning as we were laying in bed and relaxing, we heard much cheering. We figured that we could just hear GameDay from our hotel.

THEN we looked out the window. And alas, there was a . . .very interesting. . .parade going on right outside!!

Chris took a peek at the Atlanta paper, and discovered that Dragon*Con was going on, which is “the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the US.” And oh boy, were they cultural.

The first set of pics are taken with my zoom from our 11th story hotel room, so pardon the quality.

Here was my first view:
. . . interesting.

Then came some toddler-colored stormtroopers of some variety:
Then the. . . umm. . . the Hundred Dollar band??
Some “dignitaries”:A dragon and his related bounty hunters?
I dunno on this one. . . the protector of the Bunny Race?
Some Pirates,
And their mother ship. Pulled by an Econoline, of course.
An oddly placed military brigade (maybe they’ll catch the Pirates):Oh yes, the Trekkies:Could someone please tell me what this car is supposed to look like?
This looked to me like the cast of a very unentertaining Australian children’s show:Xena Warrior Princess and her entourage??
It was inevitable: it was time for the Star Wars “enthusiasts” to start their part of the Parade.
Why not start out with Pez renditions?Then the Luke Skywalkers:
All of the Leia’s:
I don’t remember what these guys are called:
The scary general guys and the Darth’s:
Um. . . I don’t remember a bagpipe player in Star Wars, but ok. . .He was very good at the theme song.
Enough stormtroopers to make anyone worry about terrorist activity:
ugly people:
Scary Scary bad guys:
Phew! Those were just some of the shots of the parade, and we missed the first half hour of it!

Later, we got out to go find some lunch. That’s when the fun really began.

It was unbelievably crowded, with all of the sidewalks cram packed with Alabama fans, Clemson fans, and people dressed in the most bizarre costumes walking around as if they were completely normal. This is when the crazies really applies. At least the parade seemed to be made up of themed outfits. Some of the following outfits you will see. . . well if you can tell me what they are supposed to be, I’ll be amazed.

I love how there’s Old-conservative-white-guy-Alabama-fan waiting to cross the street with Alice in Wonderland and . . . I don’t remember the other character’s name.
Then, while I was trying to photograph this character. . .
I managed to spot (through the camera) some of our tailgating buddies / one of Chris’ co-workers. Thank goodness for all of the crazies giving me my ultra-attunedness to the crowds around me!
Oh – and in case you were concerned, Dragon*Con is handicap-accessible:
Chris’ favorite: we saw Sir Galahad from the Ever-famous Monty Python and the Holy Grail! He offered to knight Chris:
So happy to be an official M.P. Knight!!!
Don’t know who these guys are, but they were glad to pose to get their pics taken.
. . . which was a theme that I found across the crazie board. Here I am, stalking and sneaking around to get pictures, and they are more than willing to pose. In fact, in the most controversial photo I have (we debated whether to even publish it), as I was gawking at the girl’s costumes, the guy (mr. orange suit), was apparently trying to get my attention to tell me that they’d be glad to pose with me for a picture. Of course I wasn’t paying any attention to him, but by the time I did, he was mad at me for ignoring him, threw his hands up in the air, and kept walking. Here they are, trying to hold their skirts over their rears, because this was all they had on, people, in the middle of Downtown Atlanta!!! And yes, this is the most modest photo I had of them:
Moving along (quickly!!), here are some. . .male angels?
. . . I have the song “Teen Angel” stuck in my head with a slight lyrical change. . .

One of my favorites. Can anyone explain who she is supposed to be??
Got a glimpse of Professor Snape. Wish I’d gotten a front shot – it was very accurate!!
Mrs. Pirate with her schooly boyfriend?
And last but not least, one of my favorites because she reminds me of my bad-fake-tanning-junior-high days:My favorite memory of this extremely entertaining photo shoot:

I’m standing outside of Hard Rock Cafe waiting for our table (for a very long time, due to all of the football crazies and crazie crazies in town), waiting for Chris to get back from his mission of trying to find a less crowded restaurant and mad at myself for not getting the camera from him because of all of the crazie photo ops I was missing, and a male and female crazie walk up to me and the male crazie says in a run on sentance:

“may we look at your shirt? this is exactly what i’m talking about!! it’s perfect!! see? don’t you think they’d love it? (then to me) I’m a t-shirt designer and i’ve been trying to sell this design to my bosses and they don’t get it.”

female: “yes, i see! you want to get a picture of it?”

male (sounding dejected): “it’s ok. . .”

me, highly amused at the thought of a crazie photographing me: “it’s ok, you can take a picture of it!”

male, gushing: “oh thank you!!! (female pulls out camera phone) pardon us while we photograph your chest!!”

Of course, Chris walks up at this very moment.

I quickly explain to Chris that he designs t-shirts and SHE is taking a picture because he was trying to explain the idea of my shirt to his bosses.

Later I assure Chris that I would have never let a crazie photograph my chest if it had been only male crazies, but since there was a female, I assumed that this wasn’t an awkward crazie pickup line, but that he was indeed a t-shirt designer.

Chris was appeased, I think.

By the way, my “shirt” is my new gear that I told you I would have to buy to get myself in the mood for football season. Which I promise, football will be included in my next post!!!

Dragon*Con Visitors: Thanks for stopping by! I wrote a post as follow up to this one here.

For a recap of my 2009 Dragon*Con visit, you can click here.

A Taste of Greek Culture Adventure

August 30, 2008April 30, 2012 Rachel Callahan Delicious Greekness, I'm a Glutton for Adventure

So we’re in Atlanta for a Date weekend / First football game of the season. The game is tonight at 8pm. We got here yesterday around 5pm, and so the main date part of our trip was to be dinner last night. Since we were coming for football, Chris elected me to pick out where we went for dinner. Since I grew up on Greek food (and yes, went to Greek School for a few years), one of my favorite things to do out of town is to go to a Greek Restaurant and taste the local Greek cuisine. So I searched the internet for a Greek restaurant relatively near where we were staying, and found one: Taverna Plaka.
From their website, Plaka looked quite. . . lively compared to any of the Greek restaurants in Birmingham, or for that matter, any of the other Greek restaurants we’ve ever been to. Sounded perfect!! We wanted an “event” meal, and Plaka looked like they could accommodate that wish.

And boy, did they!

Now, let me take an aside really quickly and explain the Greek word Opa. If you watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you certainly heard the word a lot, but possibly didn’t get a good feel for the meaning. In order to properly school you, I did what all academics do, and googled it. I found several entries at Urban Dictionary. Here are a couple of them:

1. OPA: a word that greek people use for no apparent reason at all.
Example:
greek dude #1:wanna dance?
greek dude #2 : OPA!

2. OPA: a Greek word used to describe a jubilant emotion of/during ‘celebration’.
Examples:
“hooray!”
“Yeehaw!”

3. OPA: A Word Used To Describe Excitement at a joyous event.
Examples:
“It’s A Boy!” “Opa! Cigars For All!”
“Would You Like To Make-Out In The Back Of My Camaro?” “OPA!”

OK, now that you understand the context, let’s begin the guide to Greek Dining in Atlanta:

They started us off with the most amazing Hummous I have ever had. It was actually delivered to us by our wonderful waitress Nikoleta (Nikki) with a pestle for us to crush and mix ourselves. I think I could have eaten half a dozen bowls of it. YUMMM.
The we ordered Tzatziki sauce (My FAVORITE Greek dish) and a Greek Salad. Again, Delectable.
Sometime during this course, the Napkin throwing and “Opa” Yelling began. The waiters and waitresses would all get big stacks of napkins, throw them up in the air (yes, they landed all over us, our food, our cokes, etc), and yell “OPA!!!!!!!”
Then, the belly dancers made their grand entrance. We creatively nicknamed them Blue. . .
And Pink.
. . . And Chris found a good use for all of those napkins when the belly dancers were dancing at our table:

A couple of things I learned about belly dancers:

1. They take LOTS of breaks. They dance for 10 minutes, break for an hour. Dance for 20 minutes, break for two hours. But I suppose it takes a lot of energy to make your body vibrate.

2. Beyonce must have gone to Greek Belly Dancing school.

3. If you’re a REALLY good belly dancer (like Pink), you can also use finger cymbals, clanging them so fast and loud that you sound like the whole cymbal section of the Million Dollar Band.

4. They don’t seem to mind their picture taken. Even by the short, old, Greek men that take so many pictures of them you start to wonder “how big IS that memory card in their camera???”

5. They are quite modest. Really. During their extraordinarily long breaks, they completely covered themselves with these long, flowing, brightly colored scarves. I would have gotten a picture, but they tended to keep to themselves on their breaks.

Back to the fun. Someone getting flaming cheese (along with a few more screams of “OPA!!”):
For the record, we ordered several tapas (appetizers) and shared them for our meal: Dolmades, Spanakopitas, Lamb Meatballs, Lamb Kabobs, and Fried Potatoes.

The ever-Greek “DJ Arti” queueing up the Greek dancing music for Blue and Pink:
Chris and I during a napkin rain:
Then Blue decided it was time to turn it up a notch:
Then the good ole’ Greek kids decided to join her on the tables (I’m sure they learned how to dance at Greek school – I think my Mom skipped that class when signing me up):
Blue joining the masses:
There was a birthday party at the table next to us. Apparently this is how you celebrate:Dessert time!! Delish triple chocolate mousse:And the level of napkinage after we had been there for our long 2 1/2 hour meal:
We missed the plate smashing – apparently we didn’t stay late enough. Blue asked me to dance with her, and I turned her down – too shy I am. She pouted at me, and I felt guilty. Oh well.

All in all, it was quite the event meal that we were looking for!! I just wish my Great Aunt Helen would have been there – she would have brought the fun and dancing up to a whole NEW level!!

Lessons in Morality

August 29, 2008 Rachel Callahan Parent of the Year, Toddlers: The Experience, Utter Silliness

Ali hasn’t hit the terrible two’s yet, of course, but there have been a few times that she has hit out of frustration. Usually inanimate objects or even herself are her objects of wrath, but a couple of times her hand has made it to Mommy. So we’ve been learning about what you can hit (I let her watch “Hit Ball” (Volleyball and other various sports) during the Olympics, which fascinated her), and what you cannot hit.

Often, I will hear her repeat to herself out of the blue, “No no hit Mommy. No no hit Daddy. No no hit AJ. No no hit Ashley.”

Or sometimes, it will be a question, just to make sure of the rules.
Ali: “No no hit Ashley?”
Me: “No no hit Ashley.”
Ali: “No no hit AJ?”
Me: “No no hit AJ.”

We have these conversations a lot.

It has worked, though. She has not hit anyone or even herself out of frustration since she started giving herself these pep talks.

Last week we went to Sam’s, and so she was in the buggy for a while. She started swinging her feet out of boredom and was kicking me, so I explained to her that kicking was a no no also. So now, her morality lessons have become a bit more violent. And Ashley (AJ’s Mom) is her favorite example.

All the time, she just starts telling herself,

“No no hit Ashley. No no kick Ashley.”

This sounds so funny to Chris and I, as if she’s a mob member randomly meditating to herself what she can and cannot do or trying to remind herself what she can’t do to keep her temper in check, so we’ll add in,

“No no brass knuckles Ashley.”

“No no cement shoes Ashley.”

She hasn’t caught onto our additions yet. That’s probably best.

Thankful Thursdays

August 28, 2008 Rachel Callahan Thankful Thursday

I’ve been wanting to start a weekly column for quite some time. I especially wanted it to be spiritually (or at least edifyingly, which incidentally is not showing up as a word in my spell check) focused, because I know that I tend to be much more lighthearted in my day to day blog.

I realized today that the perfect column would be a weekly thankfulness post. The reason that I want to highlight thankfulness is that it is a very important practice to me as I try very hard to watch what I dwell on, and to only focus on the positives. I daresay that I am better about staying positive on my blog than I am in real life, but I do try. If I do just feel the need to be negative, I try and wait until I can also blog about how God spoke to me through the negative situation (example here). I don’t always succeed by far, but it’s a goal.

I sometimes fear that people may get on my blog and be disgusted because it’s so positive – the “oh. She’s got the perfect life” syndrome. That is certainly not the case. I just try not to focus on the negatives. Not that I’m not being real, I just believe that the majority of my view on life has to do with my thoughts about life, and if I choose to think and rethink about the negatives, I will have a negative life. I blogged on this a couple of months ago here.

So, all that to say, I want to start a Thankful Thursday weekly column, and you can participate too!!

There are two ways for you to participate:

1. Blog Participants: If you are a blogger, you can use the Mr. Linky tool that will be at the bottom of the column each week. You write a post on your blog, then copy and paste the URL to that post (not just the URL to your blog in general) in the column labeled “Your URL”, and type your name or the name of your blog in the first column, labeled “Your Name”. I doubt I have many, if any, full participants to start, because that’s asking a lot for you to write a blog related to my theme, but I think it is a worthwhile theme, so I hope I find a few people that want to join me in focusing on thankfulness every now and then.

2. Comment Participants: If you don’t have a blog or don’t want to devote a post to your thankful item, please leave a comment for what you are thankful for this week!

I think that to start with, I am going to center my thankfulness posts around why I am thankful for the age that Ali is at currently. I’ll probably do a different thankfulness post every now and then, but in general I want to get into this habit while it is easy to see the positives so that hopefully I will keep that habit up when she starts to get into the 2’s (of which she is already giving us THANKFULLY rare and short previews of). I want to be able to identify the positives at every age, even if they are usually preceded by the word “terrible”!!! However, your thankfulness posts and comments are welcome to be about anything in the world that you are thankful for!!!

Please let me know if you have any questions, and I hope you join me in this fun endeavor!

My Thankful item for this week is in the post below this one, which is what gave me the idea. I am thankful that Ali is at an age where she can communicate what is wrong, but is not so emotionally driven that it upsets her. It’s a wonderful in-between age!!

If you want to write a post, please link it in using Mr. Linky, or if not, please feel free to leave a comment with your thankful item of the week!!!

Reason #371 that the age between 1 and 2 is AWESOME!!

August 28, 2008 Rachel Callahan Toddlers: The Experience

A conversation that took place between Ali and I yesterday:

Ali laid her head on my lap, then looked up with a troubled look and said, “no no fuss.”
Me: “What’s the matter? What do you need to fuss about?”
Ali: “Mouf hurts.”
Me: “Your teeth hurt?”
Ali: “Uh huh.”

. . . so for moms with screaming infants or whining babies, they will be able to communicate what is bothering them very soon!!

. . . and for moms with screaming two year olds, I’m sorry it’s over! But I hear it DOES get better, I just don’t know from experience. Sorry. :)

Ali and Daddy taking a break during Daddy/Daughter playtime last night