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.