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.