Zoë's first flight

Andrew got home from New York on Saturday afternoon around 4:00. It was nice to bump into him before my fight to Utah, which got us out of bed around 4:00 Sunday morning. I saw him for approximately twelve hours after not seeing him for two weeks--not great planning on our part! I mean, we should have planned for at least thirteen hours.

We were scrambling to get everything done, but in the end we got everything done that we needed to, I guess, because here I am in Utah (and I don't think I forgot anything too important).

I got to fly alone with Zoë, which was almost like a vacation. Our first fight was a little awkward. No one wanted to sit with us!

We got to board after the VIPs because I was travelling with a baby; there weren't assigned seats so I just picked a seat and sat down and waited for everyone else to board. No one sat in our row; instead the remaining passengers were stalking up and down the plane, desperately seeking out a row without a child in it (there were a lot of children on this flight). 

A few people almost sat next to us but as soon as they saw Zoë, they'd jump away and say with disgust, "Oh! There's a baby on this row!"

Soon the flight attendant was there trying to convince people to sit next to us. 

"Two seats together? Perfect!" exclaimed one man, who I should probably mention had a kid in tow himself. "But there's a baby in this row," he sniffed.

"But she's such a lovely baby!" the flight attendant said.

"I'm sure she is, but I don't want to sit by her!" the man said.

Way to make me feel like a social pariah! Ew--not a baby! 

Eventually the flight attendant was able to coax a soon-to-be-grandmother into my row (though she still wouldn't sit beside me). The middle seat was eventually taken by a college student studying for the GMAT. And do you know what? My baby behaved perfectly on that five hour flight. She didn't squawk once, ate twice, and only had one dirty diaper. I really don't know what everyone was so afraid of--you'd have thought I'd been holding a ticking time bomb, not a baby!

The second flight--from Las Vegas to Salt Lake--was much more comfortable for me. I walked on the plane and several people oohed and ahhed over my baby, not that I expect people to constantly be in awe of my offspring but seriously: if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all. 

That flight was only an hour, so soon I was greeted by my smiling family, and they were all basically tripping over themselves to get a glimpse of the baby.

Here we are waiting for my luggage--Auntie Josie holding Zoë and Uncle Patrick trying to ignore the camera pointed at him:

Anyway, the backspace key doesn't work on this computer so I'm suddenly very aware of how lacking in proficiency my typing skills are (do I really use the backspace key that much!?) and my baby is pretty sure I'm trying to starve her, so I'll write more later, I'm sure. 

Shake it, baby, shake it!

We made blueberry pancakes for dinner and to go with those pancakes we made...butter! I thought the kids would be more excited it about it than they were. To Rachel's credit, she was excited and she did the majority of the churning, but Miriam, well, Miriam shook the jar approximately two times before claiming she was "exhausted."

Zoë at one month

Yesterday Zoë celebrated her one month "birthday." She went to the doctor with me for my six week check up (a couple weeks early) and we were lucky enough to get my favourite nurse, Zeiynab, and one of my favourite doctors, Dr. Choi, so it was a pretty good visit. It seems strange that I won't be going in there on a regular basis anymore.

Chugga, chugga

"I stayed dry!" Benjamin chirped in my ear far too early this morning, an announcement he thought was particularly exciting because he only had to earn one more sticker to fill up his chart and filling up his chart meant...



...earning a tunnel for his train!

Happy Birthday to me!

This morning Benjamin kept asking for his "yoda." What he meant was "minion" (he got one in a cereal box a few days ago) but we found Yoda, anyway, along with all the other Star Wars toys we have. and Rachel insisted we do a photo shoot with Zoë.

Our finished product isn't nearly as pretty as the inspiration, but that's how it goes when you're winging it, I guess.

Father's Day

Andrew's still in New York, so we missed celebrating Father's Day with him this year. He missed the kids singing in sacrament meeting. He missed out on handling the cards the girls made. He missed out on Father's Day treats. Mostly, though, he missed out on us. And we missed him!

Baby Showering

This morning Zoë wore a brand new dress to church (after trying on a couple other brand new dresses that were still too large). She's a regular little clothes horse—and who'd have figured it, with her being the fourth child.

In the dress from Sister Wood

Crazy Day and Quiet Day

Yesterday was a pretty rough day around here. Poor Grandma has had a sore back (it was sore even before she came out to help us) and it just kept getting more and more painful for her to do anything. By yesterday afternoon she couldn't do anything, practically, and the pain started localizing around her kidneys.

Grandma is very familiar with kidney pains.

Eventually she decided she needed to go into the ER for a scan, so we loaded up the kids into the van and headed off to the ER. The kids are always excited to drive past the hospital where Zoë was born and what's even more exciting is it's on the way to Pelican's! Benjamin was sure that that's where we were headed (because Grandma was just fine—obviously).

He kept saying, "Grandma, us can go to Peck-ee-uns! And us can get snow cones and count cars. I will count the red cars and you can count the blue ones!"

It took me a while to figure out what he was talking about...but when I finally did it made me smile. We'd watched the movie Up on the way home from the beach last week. He was quoting Russell:

And afterwards we'd go get ice cream at Fentons. I always get chocolate and he gets butter-brickle. Then we'd sit on this one curb, right outside, and I'll count all the blue cars and he counts all the red ones, and whoever gets the most, wins. I like that curb.

He's very much into mimicking story lines lately, pretending that he's actually living them. Today he found a wand during scripture study and put a spell on himself to make himself "big, big, bigger than the whole house so that [he] doesn't even fit!"

The kids watched Alice in Wonderland this afternoon.

Anyway, we dropped Grandma off at the ER (not as callous as it sounds—even Grandpa's done it before) and headed home for my first afternoon flying solo with all four kids (since Grandma came (I did that one week without having either Uncle David or Andrew home and it was rough)).

Grandpa called to see how things were going and I said, "It hasn't been too bad. It's only been a couple of hours, but it hasn't been too bad."

He was looking at plane tickets to come out and rescue us all because Grandma's kidney stones never pass on their own. She always has to get them "blasted" and then there's recovery time and so forth.

"You'll be stuck with four kids, no husband, and an incapacitated mother-in-law," Grandpa said. "So I've been looking at plane tickets. I can work from wherever, so I'll just fly out there...and break my leg so you'll have to take care of me, too!"

Fortunately, that didn't have to happen. It's "just" a kidney infection not a kidney stone, so they sent her home with antibiotics and pain medicine, and Grandma's feeling better (though not great) today.

We spent the afternoon quietly admiring Zoë on her new play mat (yes, Andrew, I picked up more baby hud (but I couldn't resist when someone was giving this away...because I gave Benjamin's little play gym away to Kim Welling when he was finished with it so obviously we needed a new one)).

Apparently the pattern is called "vintage boy." I'm assuming this is because it's not plastered with pink and purple? My little girl looked just fine on it...though admittedly she is wearing a hand-me-down shirt of Benjamin's, so...

Tidbits

We're in the middle of a heat wave right now, with temperatures reaching the hundreds, so we've been spending a lot of time either inside or, in the evenings, at the pool. It's a good thing Grandma's here or we'd just be stuck inside the house with each other all day every day (and that would probably drive us all crazy).

The help

Back in November, Andrew was invited to apply to The Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research held at The Maxwell School of Syracuse University, so he did. In December he was accepted, which was a good but slightly panic-inducing thing.

Attending the two-week workshop is a privilege and honour but we had  a baby due on June 2 so having Andrew take off for two weeks in June sounded like a terrible idea to me. Before he accepted his slot we talked to his mom and begged her to fly out to stay with us while he was gone (it really didn't take that much convincing).

On Sunday afternoon we said goodbye to Daddy...

Zoë's first Sunday at church

With a beach trip under our belt I figured we could probably handle church, too. I think I spent the majority of sacrament meeting and Relief Society in the mother's lounge, but I made it to all of Sunday School (which was short because sacrament meeting went way over time).

At the end of the day Andrew said, "So, who's in the Mother's Lounge Club these days?"

It's funny because it's true. Mothers spend a lot of time in there, especially when their babies are small and get stuck in an eat-poop-eat-poop-eat loop. (Does anyone else out there have a baby who insists on eating every time they poop, even they've just eaten?)

Zoë is such a clean baby! We had no blow outs or spit up the whole day. I can't even tell you how weird that is for me. Rachel always had something driving down her legs, smearing up her back, or dribbling out of her mouth. Miriam was pretty good. Benjamin had major reflux until he was like a year and a half. But Zoë somehow manages to keep her bodily fluids contained, which is so weirdly wonderful I can hardly believe it's a real thing.

Here's a picture of Zoë at home after church:

Tick-tock

The first line of business when we arrived home from the beach was to get all the children bathed and into bed. Initially we had told them all to take a quick shower but Benjamin needed a bath (he told us so through tears and tantrums and it just wasn't worth the fight) so we sent the girls to our bathroom to shower and ran a bath for Benjamin.

I sat down to nurse Zoë while Andrew bathed Benjamin.

Soon, though, the girls were yelling at us from the master bath. But the tub was running and the shower was running and Rachel was screaming. I'd have gone to investigate, myself, but I didn't think it was that serious and Zoë had already been patiently waiting to nurse for so long that I didn't want to deny her milk any longer. Miriam would not come out to talk to me, nor would Rachel come out to show me, so we were doing this yelling match thing.

Something's stuck on Rachel.

(Send her out here).

She's trying to get it off.

(Send her out here).

It won't come off.

(Send her out here).

It's a shell...maybe.

(Send her out here).

It's stuck under her skin.

(Send her out here).

It's bleeding.

"For crying out loud! Get out here!" I called.

A day at the beach

I woke up on Friday morning to Zoë fussing to eat, so I pulled her into bed to feed her, and pulled out my phone for company. My friend Crystal had just sent me a message. The message was this: "Don't ever show this to Miriam!" In the message was a link to a news article: 13-Year-Old Injured After Shark Attack in North Carolina.

"Great. We're planning on going to the beach today..."

The alarm went off and I poked Andrew until he woke up and turned it off.

"What'cha reading?" he asked.

"I'm just talking to Crystal," I said. "She sent me this article about a shark attack in North Carolina yesterday."

"Ugh," said Andrew, rolling his eyes. "I wasn't going to show you that article."

I don't usually follow the news on my own and instead wait for it to be fed to me by word of mouth or through my Facebook feed. That might not make me the best informed but there's just so much news out there, you know. And most of it is depressing.

Hearing this news just made me happier about going to the beach. Going to the beach this soon postpartum might seem a titch crazy, but it's a lot more sane than going to the beach last week, which is when we first considered it. We really wanted to take a day while Uncle David was here, pull Rachel from school, and play hooky on the beach...but then it was rainy and I still wasn't feeling very great and when we talked to our parents about it, my mom said, "You're definitely crazy to consider this—sand will get everywhere!" With Zoë's not-quite-healed belly button and my own not-quite-healed body, avoiding sand made a lot of sense.

Karen, however, said, "Just have Andrew take the kids! You stay home and rest!"

"Are you kidding me?!" I asked. "I would just worry the whole time!"

That certainly planted a seed of an idea in the very fertile soil of Andrew's brain, though. He suggested going on Friday—which would basically be our only chance to get to the beach the entire summer—and then forgot that he suggested that until Thursday night when I asked him what his plans were for Friday.

"Just going into campus, I guess," he said.

"I thought you wanted to go to the beach," I said.

"Oh, yeah!" he said. "I did! Let's do it!"

"I don't know," I said. "I'm still not feeling 100% and couldn't get in the water even if I was and..."

"Oh, come on! You won't have to do anything—just sit in a chair with the baby. I'll do everything else."

"Why don't we do something different, like..."

"The beach is all there is. There is nothing else."

So, I decided to go to the beach three weeks postpartum. I think Andrew's a great father, but I'm a trained lifeguard and...I can't send him to the beach with three kids by himself. He doesn't watch them like I watch them. Not that I'm cocky or anything—just super paranoid.

We were on the road by 9:00 and the only thing we forgot to do was gas up the van, so we were off the road by 9:30, and then back on the road soon after that. It was our first time having Google Maps give us directions (the first time we went we followed friends and then after that we used the location we saved to our GPS when we followed friends) and it took us a really weird way through back roads, claiming it would save us a half hour.

Unfortunately, when traveling with children sometimes the road most travelled by is preferable to the road least travelled by. When Zoë started screaming her head off we couldn't find anywhere to pull over! We were on a windy two lane road, with no shoulder, and too much traffic to just boldly stop in the middle of the road.

And thus we learned that Zoë can scream for a long time (but she's still not very loud). The worst part of her screaming, actually, is Benjamin. He hates it when she cries so he starts crying about it.

"Don't scream at me, Baby Zo!" he'll sob. "Hey! Stop it! Mom! Baby Zo is crying at me."

And then he dissolves into flat-out wailing. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Come to think of it, Benjamin might be the reason Zoë doesn't seem very loud even when she's fit to be tied.

School's out for summer

"Can we do something fun today?" the kids asked in a way that hinted that we've never done anything fun.

Rachel had just walked off the bus. And knocked on the door. Because we locked her out. Because I forgot it was an early-out day and decided to take a nap right when I should have been heading out to wait for the bus. Oops.

"We can," I said.

After all, it's the last day of school—and an early-out day to boot—so we needed to celebrate.

"Can we go to the pool?" they begged.

"No," I said because I can't get in the water yet and watching three kids at the pool while holding a newborn seems about impossible without having at least one grown up in the water. "But we can go to the splash pad."

"I love the pash pad!" Benjamin squealed.

And so we got ready to go to the splash pad. It's a relatively low-key activity as far as parenting goes. I just parked myself on the only shady bench and read a book while the kids played between the playground and splash pad. It was 95°F today so the shade wasn't incredibly cool but it was tolerable; we only really ran into trouble when our shade dissolved into sunshine, but I eventually found another shady spot to hang out in (though it involved sitting on a picnic table).

Tired Ramblings

The other day when we were Skyping with my parents Benjamin made up his first potty joke. He just poked his head out of his bedroom door to tell it to me again.

"Mom?" he whispered.

"What, buddy?" I sighed.

He was put to bed an hour ago and I'm exhausted.

"My funniest joke is a potty joke. Knock, knock!"

"Who's there?"

"Potty," Benjamin giggled.

"Potty who?" I asked.

"Potty—someone goes pee in there!"

I roll my eyes and give him a courtesy laugh. I don't really want to encourage potty humor but I also don't want to crush his spirit (at least not more than I've already done today). It's not that I mean to crush his spirit. It just happens sometimes.

For example, when I was tucking him the very first time of the evening he was chattering away and my head was about to explode. I don't know if my kids have always been this obnoxious or if it's because there's a new baby in the house but they all seem to be loud and needy and super emotional. And then I'm also needy and super emotional. And we really, really can't wait for Grandma to get here because I'm not ready to do this on my own!

Auntie Sarah sent a letter to Miriam, in response to a letter Miriam sent to her. She said something about Riley (who is 2.5 months old) and then said "being a mom is not very easy." To that I say, "Amen and amen!"

48 hours: Yin-Yang

On Monday night I went to bed early...but Zoë woke up to eat like ten minutes after so it didn't do much good. And then she stayed up until around midnight. And then I got up with her at 2:30 and she stayed awake until nearly 6:00 in the morning when I left her in the middle of the living room floor and just walked away (because sometimes that's all you can do).

Andrew got up to console her and actually got her to go to sleep and then he got ready for the day and made sure Rachel was up and eating breakfast before he woke me up at 7:30. He planned to take the van in to get the airbags replaced (we're part of a big recall thing) and then go to campus via the dealership's courtesy shuttle.

I took Rachel out to meet her bus around 8:00 and by the time I got back inside, all the kids were awake and ready to start the day. So I got breakfast ready, started a load of laundry, scrubbed some toilets, pumped some milk, and so forth.

At around 9:30 Andrew messaged me to tell me the van wouldn't be ready until 6:00, which was a problem because Rachel had a birthday party to attend at 5:30. I set about finding a ride for her. And then I set about taking a nap because hello.

I turned on a show for the kids, fed the baby, and promptly fell asleep for the duration of Toy Story.

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur. Let's just say it ended like this:

• Some sweet sisters in the ward brought us pizza for dinner, along with a darling dress for Zoë, and all the makings for ice cream sundaes. 
• They stayed and chatted for a while, which was great because I'd hardly seen anyone over three feet tall the whole day and because...
• Andrew missed the last shuttle back to the dealership due to a miscommunication and got stranded on campus so I had to find a ride home for Rachel as well, while he figured out a way to get back to the dealership to pick up our van. He didn't get home until after 8:00 PM!

I was half asleep on the couch when he came home. He took Zoë from me, dished out ice cream sundaes for the kids (because I just couldn't), got the kids into bed, and sent me to bed early (after I pumped). 

Zoë actually stayed asleep for awhile. He brought her to me around 11:00 and I fed her and she stayed awake until around 1:00. But then she slept, woke up to eat, slept, woke up to eat, and slept.

She woke up around 8:30 this morning and stayed up until around 10:00. She ate, we did tummy time, changed her diaper, and fed her again. Miriam got up shortly after I put Zoë down. Benjamin didn't get up until nearly 11:00 (which is probably a good thing because he was Mr. Yo-Yo man last night—I walked him back to his bed at least four times throughout the night). 

The rest of the day doesn't look too bad. Andrew should be home on time, and we took a meal out of the freezer for tonight's dinner.

I just thought it was funny that on a day where I got no sleep, the kids got up in the morning and we ended up having kind of a crazy day (I don't know what I would have done if dinner hadn't been plopped in my lap), and then on a day where I actually get some sleep, the kids have what we refer to as a "mega sleep-in" and the day looks chock-full of the mundane and ordinary.

After a full 24 hours of yin I'm more than happy to have a little yang in my life again (so I can gear up for the next bout of yin). 

Reflux: not so silent anymore

Having a baby that suffers from reflux isn't an anomaly. In fact, I've read that anywhere between 40–60% of babies suffer from reflux (depends on where you read it, I guess). Their little tummies are so close to the exits so they seem to be pooping or puking all the time.

So far, Zoë's reflux has seemed to be "silent." I know she's refluxing because she's choking on seemingly nothing and constantly chewing her cud, trying to keep all that acid down. But she hasn't been spitty at all. In fact, I've been one of those moms I used to think was weird—burping my baby without a burp cloth. My children have traditionally drenched me and everything in sight with the slightest little 'urp. But not Zoë. She managed to hold everything in...

...until last night.

We got her all dolled up to take some new newborn photos (because her initial newborn photo shoot ended up being less than fruitful (thanks to her resting grumpy face)). She's a lot more "cooperative" now that she's a big two-week-old.

I put her in the newborn-size outfit I picked out for her. It's our only new newborn-size outfit. Everything else has gone through one or two or more children and looks like they've been washed about a million times (because they probably have).

I chose a sweet little lavender bow to put on her head and handed her to Andrew to load into the van with the rest of the kids while I packed the diaper bag.

He came back into the house a few minutes later declaring we needed a wardrobe change because while he was buckling her in she lost everything. It was coming out of her mouth and her nose and it just kept coming and coming and coming because Zoë overate before we left (judging on how long she was gulping down milk for).

Pure excitement

One evening while Zoë and I were in the hospital still, Andrew sent me a series of pictures of Miriam's notebook. She'd spent the evening capturing the elation she was feeling at finally having a little sister.

This one says: Baby Zoë was born on Saturday! We got to visit Mom and Zoë! Yay!!!

Bath time for Zoë

I gave Zoë a bath last night. Her, ahem, first bath at home. Yes, I realize she's two weeks old. We lost track of time a little bit, okay?

She's a pretty clean baby anyway. She doesn't seem to have reflux like Rachel and Benjamin did so she didn't even smell completely of sour milk yet. And she didn't smell like wet dog like the kids do in the summer so bathing her was a lower priority, anyway,  And then her belly button fell off, which qualified her for showers with Mom or baths with her siblings...but then her belly button started oozing so we put that on hold and then suddenly she was two weeks old and we realized we'd never quite gotten around to bathing her.

Sorry fourth child...

She wasn't too happy about getting sponged off (we're still waiting on her belly button scab to do its thing before we submerge her) and kept squawking and fussing and rooting at everything. But then I turned on the faucet to wash her hair and she completely relaxed.

Uncle David's last day

We decided to spend Uncle David's last day at the Eno River. The kids love it and it's so beautiful and it doesn't even have to involve very much walking. Although we had planned to go on a little hike we didn't end up doing that and instead played in the water the whole time.

David asked if there were any fish in this river.

"Sure," I said. "And turtles and crawdads and snakes and all sorts of critters."

Stagville with Uncle David

Yesterday afternoon we took Uncle David to Stagville, which involved much less walking than Duke Gardens. We unloaded all the kids from the car and started walking to the visitor's center only to be met by a tour group coming out of the Bennehan house.

"Would you like to join our tour?" the guide asked. "We're about to head down to Horton Grove, which is about a mile down the road. Yes, that means you'll have to load the kids into the car again when you've just taken them out—I can read that look of panic on your faces. We can tour this house at the end."

Seriously, though. That's exactly what we were thinking: we have to re-buckle all these kids?!

So we headed back to the van and got everyone situated again. It wouldn't be so terrible but Zoë really doesn't appreciated being buckled. We left her in her carseat at Horton Grove for that very reason 9I made David carry her around).

We first visited the Horton home, which was built before the Revolutionary War. The Bennehans purchased it (and the land it was on) in 1823. It's rather unstable so we weren't able to go inside but Uncle David hoisted up both Miriam and Benjamin so they could look in the window.

Sugar and spice and everything nice

I broke down and bought some headbands for Zoë—to cover her gaping bald spot. I can't tell you how long it took to find headbands without flowers as big as Zoë's head. The bows still look a bit large for her head but she also no longer looks like a (really cute and adorable) balding old man so we'll call this a win.

Duke Gardens with David

 Because I'm crazy I agreed to visit Duke campus today. My theme song has shifted from "waddle, waddle" to "everyday I'm shufflin'". I started out at an okay speed but by the end of the afternoon, I was struggling.

The entire campus seems to be under construction right now. The chapel is closed (for the next year, I think) so we weren't able to go inside, but we took a picture outside.

Exploding babies, part...whatever we're on now

Zoë's umbilical cord fell off rather early and for a couple of days everything looked just fine, but on Monday it started oozing blood. She's our forth baby so you'd think we'd have seen just about everything by now, but this was worrisome even to me. Andrew practically flipped out.

"This is worse than the umbilical cord stump!" he said. "She's going to deflate or something!"



He's always been a bit nervous about these belly buttons...

At home with Uncle David

 The kids have played so many games while Uncle David's been here. He's very patient with them, explaining and reexplaining the rules (and sometimes eventually ignoring them, too). We play games with the kids but David plays games with the kids. He's just better at it somehow. They don't even mind when he wins.

Here's David putting Miriam in a bad position in our LEGO Harry Potter game:

If I had done the same thing to her there would've been tears and tantrumming—tears and tantrumming!—not this good natured grimace-and-move-on bit she did for Uncle David.

Benjamin's three?!

There's nothing quite like having a newborn baby to make your newly minted three-year-old suddenly seem ginormous. This, of course, is comparatively speaking because Benjamin's still pretty small for his age. But look at how huge he is next to Zoë!

Sunday snuggles

Zoë and I skipped church on Sunday. I considered going, I honestly did, but then I remembered that I just had a baby like a week ago and should probably avoid hordes of people. So we stayed home. I'm sure Andrew was happy to have Uncle David's help wrangling the kids during sacrament meeting!

Daddy was ready for some cuddle time when everyone got home. When I walked into the bedroom and saw them at first I was like, "Awwwww..." and then I was like, "What are you doing to that poor baby's face?!" Zoë was completely smashed up against his chin.

Andrew obligingly moved her away from his face. She stubbornly wiggled back right where she'd been. So they cuddled like that—face smashed into face—for quite a while.

Swimming with Uncle David

The forecast for this week is unfortunately rather dour—nothing but rain, rain, rain—so making plans is difficult. It hasn't even rained very much; it's just threatened to rain a lot. We've mostly stayed cooped up in the house, which is a cozy place to be when you've just had a baby, to tell the truth, but on Monday it was warm and sunny in the morning so we went to the pool before lunch.

The kids wore Uncle David out within an hour. They kept begging him to throw them around and give them rides on his back. Meanwhile, Zoë and I just sat in the shade and relaxed.

Zor, Lord of Babies

It's no secret that Zoë has had a bit of a perplexed/annoyed/grumpy/terrified look on her face since birth. Really though she's been warming up to the idea of living with us for the next 18 or so years and is relaxing into her environment (though she still tends to stress sleep through the day and does her best awake time just after Benjamin goes down for the night (he's a little overwhelming for her)).

Last night I was stroking her face and she was loving it. She kept giving little hints of a smile, which is all she needed to do to completely melt my heart.

I put a picture up on Facebook and Andrew's aunt, alluding to the "McKayla is not impressed" meme (I think), said, "Finally...Zor is impressed!"

I liked her post because I knew what she meant. The E key is right next to the R key.

She wrote back saying, "ZOR? Who the heck is ZOR? I mean Zoë of course!!!"

And Andrew said, "ZOR LORD OF BABIES."

And, well, I liked that, too. I was handing out likes like pretzels today. Little baby smiles will do that to you, I guess.