Rise and Shout

I've been in Utah for nearly a week now and I've only blogged once so chances are I'm going to write about everything all out of order...because I recently had a baby and my brain is on a red light.

Case in point: I visited BYU campus on Tuesday. Auntie Josie wanted us to come visit her at work (she works for the chemistry department (I think) and is in the building next to the Widstoe building, which is where I worked for the biology department and which is currently being torn down so Josie's office (she's a secretary) is constantly shaking), so we did and then we headed to the library to wait for my mom, who was in a meeting. While we waited I decided to visit some former coworkers but I haven't worked there for so long and so much has changed that I wasn't sure who was where (or even still there). At least the building is still there.

I knew Susan still worked there, though, and I knew where to find her, so I headed down to special collections to chat with her for a minute (I was the stacks manager for special collections right up until about two hours before Rachel was born). We chatted and then I said that I wasn't even sure who else to visit (for the reasons I listed above).

"You have a brother working here somewhere," Susan mentioned.

"No, David quit," I said. "He works for SirsiDynex now."

David also used to work in special collections. I think he was even a student while I was stacks manager (which wasn't at all awkward considering I'm his younger sister) but I can't keep track of these things.

"Nancy," Susan said gently, with a huge grin on her face. "You have another brother who works here."

"Oh, yeah! Patrick!" I said, a little embarrassed.

He's up in book repair. And that morning when he left for work I even called out, "Have fun fixing books!" So really I do know that he works there. He's worked there for years! He just never worked there while I worked there so when I thought about visiting people in the library he wasn't on my radar. He was still in high school (or had barely graduated) when Rachel was born and now he's the assistant manager in book repair. So clearly I haven't worked at the library for a long time, but at least the library is still there! (RIP Widstoe.)

We visited Patrick (because he works right there in the library!) and then met up with my mom and then met up with my niece. She had to drive her brother to work and then wanted to stop by to see me and Zoë before going on a date in the evening. We went upstairs to see my mom's students (she's in the music and dance library). She said, "This is my daughter, Nancy, and my two little granddaughters, Rosie and Zoë," and then sensing some confusion from her students added, "Nancy's not Rosie's mom."

Rosie and I are 11 years apart.

Rosie and Zoë are 18 years apart.

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).