Who knew that all you had to do was ask for advice of all things, and NO ONE would comment on your blog?? I mean, not even a comment about the videos or anything!! I thought everyone liked giving advice!! Since you guys were no help, I had to do all the research myself.

Eli-Junkies – the two posts below this one have updates on and pictures of Eli. However, I need all the advice I can get regarding the camera question towards the end of this post. If you have any input, please help me!

I wrote a few days ago about Chris telling Ali that her (dirty) diapers “ROARED” like Tigers. Here is a video of her going through a few of her animal sounds, including the “diaper”. It’s in the car, because that’s the place she likes doing them best (she is captive and focused) :)

But right after I finished the video, I realized that I left off my current favorite animal “noise” – the fishie. So I thought I’d start over. And I learned a new rule – kids will only do it once – if you’re lucky – while you’re videoing them. Ali totally balked on the diaper punchline, which to me anyway, makes it pretty funny.

And yes, I’m still using my camera to do videos. It’s just so handy! It’s not like I can carry around the camcorder in my purse. . .speaking of cameras, I need some advice. I have camera fever for one that takes better pictures. HOWEVER, it still MUST still be one of the ultra small cameras. As you can tell from my blog, I photograph everything, and I don’t plan on carrying around a huge, bulky camera bag. Sooo. . . I want to get a new camera that will take as close to the quality of pictures that the huge ones take, but without the bulk. I have always heard that Nikons are the best, but then when I was looking at reviews, they didn’t even rank in the small camera category. I Currently have a Sony Cybershot 6 mp. It is 3 years old. It does ok, but I really want more crisp pictures. Is it even possible to get ultra good photography in an ultra small camera? Does anyone have any input, suggestions, or camera commentary? What should I look for? Please help!!!!

p.s. – for the record, I was NOT driving while filming these videos. Seems pretty obvious to me, but I didn’t want there to be any question about it!

Eli did nurse last night, and seemed to do pretty well! He is also up to 3 lbs 2 oz! The nurses are amazed at his appetite.

His first open eye picture!! A very troubled look. . . :)
JC feeding him a bottle
Sweet pouty lip. . .
The family “waiting their turn” to see baby Eli yesterday. (Except for poor Ali – I got her back there and the nurses kicked her out in about 10 seconds – I thought they might but JC and L thought they would let her back, so we gave it a try!! But she did get to see Eli for a few seconds. . . and point and say “baaaby!!!!”)
There are more pictures from yesterday in the post below.

We ALL went up to the hospital yesterday after lunch (all meaning JC, Lindsay, Me, Chris, Ali, Mom, Dad, and Mammaw, plus Lindsay’s Mom and Grandmother met us up there! We were quite the crowd in the hallway!), so my Mom and I were able to get a bunch of pictures.

Here is their first family picture!! Mom did a great job getting this one:

Swapping out

Look how tiny he looks compared to JC’s hand!!!
Sleeping Peacefully. . .
He made some great facial expressions today and even smiled at least once, but of course those were in the split seconds that we weren’t taking pictures. He is doing great – Lindsay and JC were going back up to the hospital for his 9:30 feeding last night for Lindsay to nurse Eli for the first time! So exciting. Hopefully they will update me later on. Hope you enjoy the pictures anyway!

JC Emailed me just past midnight last night – they had just gotten home from visiting Eli. I guess Eli’s a night owl like his Daddy! Here’s the update:

No big news, but he’s doing great. He’s still at 3 lbs, but breathing 21% oxygen (just like the rest of us) and now getting 15 CCs of milk at a time. We sat and held him for 30-45 minutes. We forgot the camera, but we’ll definitely take it up there with us tomorrow. By the way, the purple paci in the pictures is a premi paci.

We are hoping to get to go up to the hospital today with JC and Lindsay to see Eli – I can’t wait!! I will be sure and take lots of pictures.
p.s. – Today is JC’s birthday!!!! Be sure and comment him a happy birthday!! (they do read all of your comments!!)

Chris declared today “Mother’s Day” to make up for the real Mother’s day that I spent in the ER. So I got to pick everything that we did and ate all day long! What a sweet hubby I have!

We started out the morning reading books. Ali is doing great with her letters. She recognizes and names a,b,c, and d (sometimes).
On our way to bike ride. Don’t you love the matching polka dot bow and sunglasses?
As soon as I got her “hat” out, she started saying, “hat!! budddbrr (her bike/motorcycle noise)
Riding with Daddy – Crestline Village

After our bike ride, we ate lunch at Zoe’s and then went home for Ali’s nap time.

During nap time, we got this bench out of the basement, graciously given to Ali by Aunt Kitty. It looks like Ali is waiting on the bus to come pick her up!
We got out the “baby water park” for Ali for the first time. First she had to stand there and check it out.
Daddy helping her get in it. Not too sure – getting splashed!
A bit mad at the splashing water, still trying to decide if she likes it.

It’s love!!!
The freezing, shivering fun look. Since this is water coming straight from the sprinkler, it was pretty cold, but her violent shivering didn’t get in the way of her fun!!
After about 20 minutes of fun and splashing, she looked at Daddy and said “a na” (translation: “all done”. She usually only uses this phrase when she’s finished eating – we were impressed that she realized she could use it to say she was done playing in the water too.)

All wrapped up in the blankie!

Snuggling to get warm!!!
After this, she had a nice warm bath to thaw. She really likes sitting up in the tub and normally doesn’t like laying down, but today she didn’t mind laying back in the tub to get her hair wet at all! In fact, she just stayed sprawled out in the warm water until I sat her back up.

Tonight Chris made some AMAZING ribeye steaks that I bought yesterday (gotta love markdown meats!!) and baked potatoes – YUMM!! It was a red-letter day!! A great rain check Mother’s Day!!!

Ali loves to do animal noises. She probably has about 20 animals that you can go through and she will answer with the noise, such as “what does the sheep say?” Ali: “ba_a_a”.

Ali is teething again, so she is having incomprehensibly nasty diapers. For those of you who are not parents yet or who are parents but have been lucky enough to have yet to change a diaper (ahem, JC and Lindsay), I will spare you the details. But they are bad.

Last night, we had gone over to Brookwood Mall to get a quick bite of dinner and to walk around for a few minutes, and she had one of those blowouts on the way over there. It was BAD.

So on the way home, Chris was joking with her that her diapers ROARED like a tiger. She thought this was hilarious and started laughing and saying “ROAR!!”

So now, if you go through the list of animals, it goes something like this:

What does the monkey say?
eee eee eee!!!
What does the snake say?
ssssss!!
What does the horsey say?
heee!
What does the tiger
say?
ROAR!!!!
What does the doggy say?
woof
woof!
What does the diaper say?
ROAR!!!!!

Eli Junkies: There are several blogs from today, including the promised all-pictures blog, below that are updates on Eli. But this is, after all, still my blog. So this post is about the Callahan’s, not the Zannis’. :)

Today was a fun day! It was the first day this week that wasn’t crazy-chaotic, and it felt just a little bit like life was normal. For those of you whom I have concerned about my driving with my recent posts, I will have you know that many times in my life I have not stopped at stop signs, but today I was so careful I even stopped at a stop sign that wasn’t there!!! They FINALLY re-routed Grants Mill Road today, which means that it now comes out at the stop light past the monastery rather than at the stop SIGN before the monastery. However, I did not realize this until I had already stopped at a now non-existent stop sign. I looked around, confused, and then realized – no more stop signs on Old Leeds Road!! Now THAT is worth celebrating!! Let’s just hope it doesn’t make me get another TICKET on Old Leeds Road.

Ali and I went to Chris’ office for lunch, which was fun. Going to a “company lunch” made it actually feel like I was really an employee there! I’ve been to tons of company lunches at Slappey, and that’s where you really get to know your co-workers – you know, who spills food on their selves at every meal, who tends to have those type of teeth that food sticks out of, etc. But today, Daniel’s Mom sent bar-be-que and all the fixins (including banana puddin’) to the office as a Thank You. I’m not exactly sure what the Thank You was for, but You’re welcome!! It was wonderful, and we all enjoyed it immensely, except for Ali, who is teething and isn’t eating hardly at all this week. Unless you let her “dip”. Then she’ll eat anything!! She also wasn’t eating much tonight at supper (at the food court in the mall), and so we saved the secret weapon for last – Polynesian Sauce from Chic-Fil-A. She looked like she had been in a cheap horror flick by the time she had finished, but it was TOTALLY worth the mess. She downed everything in sight!!! After very liberally dipping it, of course. Seriously – she will dip anything in Poly Sauce – including all fruits and vegetables, even watermelon. Ick. Oops – hold on.

OK I’m back. Chris just text messaged me from upstairs (the baby’s asleep – can’t yell) and needed me to bring him clothes from the laundry room. I hadn’t been able to do laundry in 2 weeks, so I washed everything.

Ali is doing great on walking. She is walking all the time now – she has quit crawling cold turkey. It’s amazing how quickly a kid can pick up walking skills when they wait until they are 16 months old to start. She is also understanding nearly everything we say now, which is so much fun. I’ve been experimenting the last couple of days with giving her detailed instructions, and she has been performing them perfectly, like “take a piece of candy and give it to Gina (who was on the other side of the office)”, and “can you go get my phone and bring it to me?” and (from the other side of the house), “Go up the stairs and go in your room, it’s time to go night night.” It’s really neat to see her do exactly what I tell her to do, and in a thoughtful, mostly internal voice, repeat part of my commands back to herself while doing them to make sure she remembers what she’s doing, like “upsta, upsta, night night.” or “dane, dane” (what she calls Gina). I love seeing her little wheels turning!

Well, that’s the Callahan update. Here are a few pictures I took of Ali today:

My little tanned beauty. “Pretty” is one of her favorite words right now. She points to everyone’s jewelry or bows and says “pretty!!”. And she MUST have a bow in her head, or she pats the top of her head and very distressed, says “bow!! bow!!” Such a girly-girl.
Dazed and confused from teething.
This looks like she did the ever-famous self-portrait, holding the camera herself.
Her new “big girl” shoes. These cracked me up – I had to buy them!! She LOVES them. I also got her another pair of shoes with very small multi-colored rhinestones on them, which, of course, she says “pretttty!!” about every time she sees them.

Here are pictures of Eli today, and (finally!!) pictures of the tea!!!!

Mommy holding Eli for the second time:

Daddy holding Eli for the FIRST time!

Baby Eli!!

Here are the tea pictures!! Kind of anticlimactic being that Eli is already here, but hey – it was Lindsay’s last day of being pregnant!!

All the hostesses and Lindsay! l-r: Amy Funk, Me, Lindsay, Mom, Ann Marie, Ashley Spurling, Amanda Hayes, and Ali.

Ali thoroughly enjoying herself at the tea:

Lindsay and Julie Hasty:

Ali and Amanda:
Layla playing with the baloons after the tea (Layla is JC and Lindsay’s dog):
The Sign in / welcome table (it say’s “Elijah’s Party”):
The Food table! Ann Marie did a GREAT job coordinating and planning the menu!

The Hostess Gifts / Centerpieces:

Ali visiting with a guest her size: Brooks!
The Falls ladies!

Well, that’s the picture update!!
As a side note, this is my 100th blog!!!! I know that in the blog world, the 100th blog holds a lot of significance (I think it’s the point where it becomes obvious that a person is not just on a blog-fling, but will stick to it), and most people do something special on it, like “100 things about me”. But I’ve already done that and I am NOT coming up with another 100 things. I’ve been thinking in the small moments of calm throughout the week what I could do to celebrate, but I’ve had a LOT of posts this week, and it has snuck up on me. So, why not celebrate it with pictures of Eli??? So, I’m celebrating!!!

JC just called me, and they are on their way home from visiting Eli at the hospital – they were there for quite a while! JC said that he looks absolutely fantastic, and that he is down to 27% oxygen, which is great. He got his first bottle of milk today, and did great – it was 11 cc’s of breastmilk. Previously he was on a feeding tube, and was only getting 5 cc’s of milk per feeding. Commentary from Rachel: For a frame of reference for those of you who haven’t been through the “fun” of pumping and storing breastmilk, 1 ounce is about 30 cc’s, and most infants start out on 2 ounces (~60 cc’s) and quickly move up to 4 ounces (~120 cc’s) per feeding. So Eli is taking about 1/3 of an ounce of milk per feeding.

The best part of the visit was that they got to hold him for the first time!! (Lindsay got to hold him right after he was born, but she doesn’t remember that too well and JC didn’t get to hold him at all). JC said that it was definitely one of “life’s greatest experiences”, and that it didn’t feel like he was holding anything but blankets. Eli even opened his eyes for a minute while JC held him.

They are thrilled with his progress, and thrilled that he got moved down to the CCN. They took some pictures and promised to get them to me tonight to post for all of you!