Rachel Callahan

15 Months Old!

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Ali is 15 Months old!!!

Ali (above) and I (below) at 15 Months

. . . . and STILL refusing to walk.

She was so early at everything else, especially crawling. She started cruising very early. I remember my dad saying “look at her go! She’ll be walking by Thanksgiving!” Ha.

She totally could. Totally. She just won’t.

Sunday, she gave her very first inclination that she just MIGHT be interested – she was standing up holding onto something and let go and just stood there (perfectly stable, because she could TOTALLY walk!!) for about 10 seconds, then reached out and grabbed something again. Yesterday, I got her to do it one more time, but then she refused for the rest of the day.

So tomorrow is her 15 month visit, and being the objective person I am, I have worked out all of my logical arguments to the doctor as to why it’s just fine that she’s not walking yet (at 12 mos, the doctor told me she needed to be walking at 15 mos). Obviously, she is more of a vocab child than a walker. I counted (again, being objective here), and she has 92 words (that I’ve remembered to record), 12 two word sentances and one three word sentance, most of which she uses quite often. She talks constantly, she understands intricate vocab things that I would NEVER think she was old enough to do – such as properly changing pronouns (ex: me: “are you giggly?” ali: “i giggly!”, or me: “you did it!” ali: “I did it!!”), and she understands almost everything I tell her to do and follows instructions very well.

My other justification, of course, is that she could TOTALLY walk if she would try. She walks perfectly holding onto one finger – she just refuses to even try to see if she could do it on her own. So I am anxious to see what the doctor says.

Another important thing about 15 months is that it marks the day that if I were to get pregnant (accidentally, at this point) at or after this point, our kids would be at least 2 years apart. I don’t know why that feels more sane, but for some reason it does. So we have made the 2 year marker!!! Whoo hoo!

I’ll update with the Doctor report tomorrow!

i’m a nursery party pooper and chris’ retirement party

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Averi rocking Ali, then trying to inhabit her space. Notice Sam in the corner.

I have been working in the nursery at the church for about 6 years now, and so I would say that I am pretty well-versed in the nursery goings-on. I have also been a supervisor in the infants room every other Sunday for about a year.
The way it works is, when its your week to work, you get a postcard in the mail reminding you. Then, on Saturday, The nursery director calls all the workers to remind them that it is their week. However, if you’ve been doing it long enough and have a “perfect record” of attendance (or calling beforehand if you can’t come), she eventually quits calling you on Saturday.
Well, yesterday it was our day in the nursery (Chris works with me once a month). So I show up to the nursery after Sunday School, and the only two people in there (with 6 babies!!) are Bob and Greta, and it’s their first Sunday ever to work in there! I am shocked, because we almost always have a supervisor in there, and when we don’t, we at least have someone very experienced in there. Not that Bob and Greta weren’t doing a good job – they were doing fantastic! All the babies were sleeping or content, and everything looked well under control. I just felt extremely sorry for them, because, well, they really got the short end of the stick on their first Sunday ever!!
After me lamenting and apologizing for a few minutes, Greta finally meekly says, “Well, actually, I think, maybe, you were supposed to be the nursery supervisor this morning.”
I gasped. Surely not!! I was working second hour!
She said “well, I think Laura wrote a note on your postcard” (which I quickly glanced at and threw away) “asking you to work the first hour.”
I felt terrible!! Here I was shocked that these new workers were left alone, and it was all my fault!
Anyway, it worked out fine – they did GREAT (They should be promoted immediately!!), and two people that were supposed to work the next hour couldn’t come, so Chris and I just took their place.
However, I will now be demoted back to getting Saturday calls, and I have now ruined my perfect nursery record.
Oh well, at least it gave me something to blog about.

To continue our nursery saga, apparently all of the babies were on their best behavior for the “newbies” the first hour, because they ALL melted down for our hour. It was chaos!!! It hasn’t been that bad in there in I don’t know how long. They were all sleepy and fussy and inconsolable. Totally wierd!
So, I think that it did it in for Chris. It’s a wierd thing – once you have a baby of your own and you truly experience the pain of inconsolable crying and GET PAST IT (I promise, inconsolable crying does end somewhere around 6 months old!!), you have much less ability to cope with other babies crying. See, before we had a baby of our own, working in the nursery was so romantic and sweet. Chris was AMAZING. He could put any baby to sleep, and console any baby by taking them over to the window to look out. He would think of songs that had each baby’s name in it and sing it to them!! “Sweet Caroline”, and “Mandy”. . . It was amazing!! However, hearing a crying baby now is kind of like a flashback from being in war – it reminds us too much of the painful war with Ali Qaida last year, and I think his Post-Traumatic-Stress-Syndrome is just too deep to keep working in the nursery. I have Mommy genes, so I can handle it a little better. He handles it great externally, but it just eats him up internally. So, after six years of loyal service, Chris is going to retire from the nursery. Hey babe – sorry you got such a bad retirement party in the nursery yesterday!! :)

are pacifiers the ring of Mordor?

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Ali and her paci at 9 months


Me and my paci at 2 1/2!!!!

Ok – so I am not a Lord of the Rings fan. I went to watch the first one at the theatre at midnight the night it came out with Chris and a bunch of friends (including Ann Marie, who can locate every place on the map of middle earth!!!), and I couldn’t sleep all night afterward because it kept going through my head, so I decided I never wanted to watch any of them again.

However, when I got home from Lifegroup last night, Chris had the last one on, and it was almost to the end, so I begrudgingly half-watched the last hour of so of it while doing anything I could to not watch it (reading the paper, reading blogs, shopping on the internet). However, the END is not so bad – it’s nice and climactic, then happy. Not as intense as watching 4 hours of nothing but hopeless dread.

While watching, I noticed a similarity to the power of the ring. You know how everyone can’t help but put it on, and it is just absolutely compelling even though they know they shouldn’t have it on? I think Ali’s pacifiers are her ring.

Ali, like Frodo, is a very, very obedient, pure child (most of the time, up to this point in her long, long life). She almost always obeys me without fussing. However, Paci’s are the one exception. She only gets them for naptimes and bedtimes. When she wakes up, she has all three of them – one in her mouth, and one in each hand. I pick her up out of bed, and I say kindly and sympathetically, “drop your paci’s in the crib!” She looks at me sadly, and slowly pulls the first paci out of her mouth with a free finger. She looks at it, she looks at me. She sometimes can’t help but put it back in her mouth – just for a second. Sometimes it looks like her hand is powerless to the magnetic draw of her mouth. She finally drops the first paci in the crib. I say “time to leave the next paci!” Remember, the first paci to go in the crib was the one in her mouth, so now she just has one in each hand. She puts the one in the visible hand (her right hand is behind my back) in her mouth for one last satisfying drag. Again, she looks at me forlornly, but finally takes it out and drops it in the crib. At this point, she is really hoping that I have forgotten that she has a paci behind her back. I say “time to put your last paci in the crib.” She pulls it out, puts it in her mouth (powerlessly) for one last drag. Sometimes on the last one, I have to tell her several times, and she powerlessly puts it back in her mouth several times. It just is so compelling, and that last drag on a paci is so satisfying. Finally, she drops it in the crib.

Then we celebrate!! We jump up and down and kiss, and she is happy. It’s just separating with them that is the hard part. Once they are in the crib (the lake of fire), they are powerless over her. She is back to her happy, bright life in the Shire.

"Spa" trip, anyone?

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Well, I’m sure y’all remember my “spa” trip to the dentist, right? If not, go refresh yourselves and see if it sounds like something you would find fun and relaxing, or at least needed, or just plain “indulgent” (as Simon says) like me. If it sounds fun, we got ANOTHER mailer from them, and this time the free offer was a completely free dental visit, including all of their new-fangled digital x-rays, massage chair and warm blankets and cool eye pads and all ($260 value, according to them!!). If ya want it, you are welcome to it! Just comment back that you would like it, and I will mail it to you (or give it to you if I see you regularly). And actually, now that I think about it, I picked up a few “referral” cards last time I was there that had the same offer on it. So more than one people can have this wonderful gift. :)

Baby Tips

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It’s baby season!! Everyone I know is pregnant right now, and it seems like there’s a new announcement every day! A few of my closest friends (and most loyal readers!) are having their first baby – Lindsay, Barkley, and Deidre. So since we all know that NO ONE ever gives you child rearing advice when you’re pregnant (getting advice is almost as rare as hearing people’s gruesome birthing experiences, right??), I figured I would put my two cents in.

Let’s start with nutrition:

Babies should never be allowed to have carbonated beverages, especially ones with caffeine.

Be sure to limit sweets to very small portions. Especially chocolate, since it has caffeine in it.

Nothing is better for baby than organic foods. No processed foods with chemicals and preservatives!!

Do not overstuff baby’s mouth. They cannot chew and swallow as fast as adults!

Let’s move on to transportation:

If allowing baby to ride on a motorcycle, be sure that she has a correctly sized, DOT approved helmet.

Be sure to ALWAYS have baby in an approved car seat when travelling.

It is not recommended to take baby out of the house while they are still under a week old. And especially do not put babies in grocery carts, as they are germ infested.
Babies’ bodies cannot regulate heat as well as adults. Be sure to keep baby in well-controlled temperatures. Never let baby be in the cold for long!
Time for some general safety tips:

Do not throw your baby.

Make sure that all toys that baby plays with and clothes that baby wears are rated for their age.

Be careful to never allow baby to get anything wrapped around their neck.
Babies can easily blend in with their laundry. Be sure not to throw the baby in with the baby laundry.
Carefully supervise baby when playing near unstable objects.
Never leave baby unsupervised outdoors.
Or on stairs.
Or on the changing table.
Or while climbing on shelves.
Or while sitting on dinosaurs.
Do not let baby share food with animals.
Speaking of animals, let’s now move on to animal/baby interaction:
Cats do not generally appreciate having a baby placed on top of them.
Be careful when allowing your baby to point at ducks. They WILL bite babies.

Do not let your baby feed goats, as they are germ infested creatures.
Or deer.

And be sure to keep baby away from wild and dangerous animals.

Now for some tips on thoughtfulness to others:
It is generally not recommended to tent camp with a baby. This may be unpleasant for you, and for all of the campers around you.
Do not let your baby take things away from other babies.Now for some tips on what to expect from babies:
Newborns can fall asleep in some very uncomfortable looking positions. Try to adjust them to make them as comfortable as possible. They won’t wake up – don’t worry.

Babies may not like the first instrument you try to teach them,
So just keep trying until you find one that they seem to be naturally talented at.Learning to tell if a baby has a dirty diaper can sometimes be challenging. Just find a method that seems to work for you and stick with it.
Babies may not get as excited as you about giving out Valentines cards. Don’t expect your baby to be attentive in church their first Sunday.

Sequel posts:

Toddler Tips
Baby Tips, 2.0

Ali’s Vacation!

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Ali had a wonderful time at Gramamma and Pop’s, so I figured she would appreciate it if I blogged about her vacation also.

My parents just got some chicks – from 1 day old to 2 weeks old. When I got there to drop Ali off, we went to see them, and the first thing she did was try to wring one’s neck with her thumb and index finger! After that, though, Ali loved playing with the “chickies” – every time mom went in the garage, she said “chickie!!”, and of course she learned that chickies say “peep peep”.
Here are a few pictures of Ali with her chickie friends:



My dad has been driving me crazy to let him take Ali out on a motorcycle – he swears he took us at a younger age. So he turned one on, and of course she was scared to death of the sound. They did manage to get one picture in before she insisted on getting away from it. However, every time the passed the motorcycle for the rest of the weekend, she would say “buddin buddin”..
Other funny occurances:
– Dad got to keep her all Sunday afternoon while Mom was helping at a tea. She wouldn’t nap for him, and at one point, started calling out “stinky! stinky! STINKY!”, and so he went in there, and sure enough, she was right!

– They went to check on Oreo, and mom couldn’t find Oreo’s food and water bowls. She asked Ali where they were, and she crawled right to them! We’ve never talked about that being Oreo’s food, so I guess she’s just seen Oreo eat there and put 2 and 2 together. She also blew lots and lots of kisses at Oreo when she saw her!

– She got to go to bible study with Mom – she got to crawl around during the whole lesson and generally distract everyone. She recognized Laura Pierce from the nursery, and would climb up in her lap every now and then. :)

That’s about all the stories I’ve heard so far from their weekend. . . I’m glad she had fun!!

It’s a Boy!!!

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My third “grandbaby” is a little boy!!! Barkley and Jeremy got their sonogram this morning and we are all super excited! He looked good and healthy, and performed very well having his picture taken :)
Now if we could just get a final name to call him, but hey – I’m still waiting on that for my upcoming nephew too!! ;)

Kiawah, Take Two

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We had another fun day today. Our plan was to bike the second half of the Island, or at least a small part of it (I’m still amazed at how huge the Island is!!). The second half is unallowable by car (unless you live there), but allowable by bike. It’s the sssuuuuppperr fancy half, where a whole bunch of CEO’s and Celebrities have their Summer houses. So, because we’re high-C dorky type people, we looked up a bunch of the especially huge looking lots last night on reverse-phone-book-lookup, then googled the people to see who they were. It was fun – we found several CEO’s of large companies, a Director of Coca-Cola, a bigwig on Wall Street that was also involved with the securities and exchange commission, a CEO of a big company that “mysteriously” and suddenly resigned from his company along with his partner, and then a pre-Martha Stewart insider trading perpetrator. It is so fun being nosy! So we biked for several hours, and found all the houses of the people we “researched”.

As far as the houses went, they were unbelievable. All of them were 1million+, and the beachfront ones had to be all 5million+. We figured that we bicycled past more than 1 billion dollars of real estate today! Unbelievable. AND – a lot of them were on their own island in the middle of the marsh, or on an island with a few other houses.

Here are some of the especially huge houses we saw: Notice me standing on the front steps of this house for perspective on how ginormous it is!!
We’re pretty sure this is the biggest one we saw:
While we were looking at the houses, we had our first alligator sightings!!! This is the first one we saw:When we saw that alligator, he was sunning himself on the bank. Me, being the adventurous, animal loving-and-unafraid one, wanted to get Chris to take my picture with him. I was going to get closer to him, but Chris rather forcefully (for him) commanded me to stop, turn around, and get my picture taken from the road. So I turned around and posed, and I hear the alligator start running!!! Chris gasped, and I lost my unafraid facade and ran for my life!!! Next thing I know, Chris is laughing, because the alligator had just gotten spooked from us and jumped back into the pond! It was a hilarious moment, and it made Chris feel good to know that I, too, can be spooked by animals.

We saw another one a little farther away, and then I finally got my picture with alligator #3:
(notice the small body of water between me and alligator #3) :)
We ended up seeing six alligators total. Here are #5 and #6 (the biggest two we saw):
We also saw an eagle and his nest (nest in the center tree of the picture below):
We then went on a “marsh tower” to get a couple pictures of the marsh. It was very rickety and wiggly – it shook significantly every time we took a step!!
Here’s a picture from the tower:
A picture of us from the tower:
The rickety stairs down from the rickety tower:
It was a beautiful night, and so it was great to go out to dinner. Here are pictures of us at the Bohicket Marina where we ate dinner:
And here’s a really cool picture that Chris took of a deer on the way home from dinner:

We are headed home tomorrow morning! This has been a great place to vacation, and we really hope to come back and bring Ali next time! We can’t wait to see Ali. It will be so exciting! We have to checkout by 10am, but I think we’re going to get up early and try to leave by 7am so that we have some time to spend with her in the afternoon. Yay!!!

Loving life on Kiawah

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We are having a wonderful time in Kiawah Island! We started our trip out with a stop to our formerly in Birmingham favorite wing place, Wing Stop (closed due to our restaurant curse – see #22). They have the MOST amazing fries ever – they have sugar and salt on them, and wow are they good! And their ranch dressing just makes them 10 times better. The wings are good too :)
Then we spent a wonderful evening, morning and afternoon with the G family – Barkley (and baby!!!!), Jeremy, Buck and Savannah! It was so good to see them – they are such a cute couple!! As mentioned above, Barkley is pregnant with their first (non-puppy) baby, and they they are just so lovey-dovey with each other and excited about their soon-to-be new arrival!! It’s so fun to watch another couple so excited to have a little one! They find out if they are having a boy or a girl on Wednesday – I absolutely CAN’T WAIT to find out!!! (I think it’s a girl) ;)

Oddly enough, the temperature dropped like 20 degrees while we were at lunch with Barkley and Jeremy, which made Kiawah Island very frigid when we arrived there!! However, we attempted to go out onto the beach when we got there anyway, but it was impossible!! It was soooo cold and windy! We bundled up and went on a bike ride (off of the beach) instead.

Kiawah Island is such an odd place – it is 13 square miles, and the WHOLE thing is run like a hotel. There are hundreds (maybe a thousand??) of houses, villas, inns, and even a very fancy hotel part, but all of it is under the “hotel” amenities, services, etc. Very cool! I’m not sure how it works (since it seems like the majority of the houses and villas are actually owned privately), but it works nicely! Our villa is great – and the deck is awesome.

Today, we lounged around the condo most of the morning – we sat out on the porch and drank waaay too much coffee while having an unofficial “meeting” about life. :) It was really great! I know that sounds dorky, but it’s so easy to not really sit back and talk to each other about goals and plans and what’s going on and what’s coming up in real life – sometimes it takes a vacation to really talk and plan stuff! And it really is great quality time as well. Then we went on a longer bike ride – it was a little less windy, so we headed down the beach. We had a very similar experience biking that Brad and Deidre did at the beach a couple of weeks ago. We rode all the way to the end of the beach and it was pretty easy, but then we turned around, IT WAS SOOO HARD!! We were riding into the wind, and I really didn’t think it would be as drastic as Deidre made it sound (sorry Deidre), but it was even worse! It was so windy, so cold, so hard to pedal – By the time we got back, My head hurt, my ears hurt, my lungs hurt, my legs hurt. . . . :) But it was fun!

We drove back to James Island (near Charleston) to eat at the Charleston Crab House for dinner tonight (which was on “Flip That House”), and it was delicious!! The restaurants on Kiawah are all a little on the fancy side for us (Ann Marie and Scott would like them MUCH better than us), so it was great to just get some simple, delicious seafood where the menu items aren’t described with words like chutney, saffron, frissee, mignonette, and buerre blanc!!

We are relaxing tonight back at our villa. It’s great! But we REALLY miss our baby girl. She is having a great time with Gramamma and Pop, but Mom told us today that she woke up from her nap crying and calling for “Diddy” over and over. :( It broke our hearts!! She was fine after a few minutes, but we definitely are looking forward to seeing her again soon!

Here are some pictures of our trip so far:

These two are at the end of the “easy” side of our bike ride, right before we started back on the hard part. We’re at the channel between Kiawah and Seabrook Islands.

OK – you can’t really tell, but there were dolphins swimming right off the shore here. I circled one with yellow :)

Here we are at the oldest living tree in the Eastern US – it was unbelievable!! We are behind a fence because we didn’t know that the tree “closed” at 5pm :)

Here’s a picture of some of the amazing winding branches off of the tree:

Us at the beach:

Here’s us in front of a really spooky tree right by the beach:

I’ll update later! Although we are having an AWESOME time spending time together and relaxing and exploring this island, so who knows if I’ll find time before we get back! :)