Moving on up

Zola got her "move up" letter at daycare today.  It means that she's ready to move up to the next class, in this case from the infant room to the one-year-old room.  She'll be with Makeda and Anna, who also had Emmeline, and Anna was a teacher in the class Oliver started in with another lead teacher.  They're both lovely women, and they already "borrow" Zola from her current teachers for snack and a little time on the playground.

Zola is definitely ready to move up.  She's walking well, trying to communicate (she signed "please" tonight at dinner and said "more"), and sits up at the table and eat school snacks and lunch.  She'll have to transition to a cot, but other than that, I think it will be an easy transition.  Especially since she already knows and likes the teachers.  The other kids in her current class are all little babies.  Some as young as 8 weeks, but lots of true babies in general.  She needs to be around kids who are a little more advanced in their development to keep moving her along on things like talking.

But I'm glad we started Zola at daycare in the infant room.  We had originally planned to start her in August instead of July and go right for a one-year-old room.  But even as well as she got used to daycare, I think she would have missed a lot by not going to the infant room.  Kendi and Annette are wonderful and really loved on her to help her get used to the center.  They got her using her sippy cup well and even got rid of her pacifier for mid-day naps.  She's very comfortable at daycare now, with any number of teachers (they all come "borrow" her sometimes to carry her around or do her hair; Wes and I say she is the daycare mascot), and I think it's because she felt secure in her own classroom.

One of the things I've loved about the infant room is the long notes they send home about her day.  I think Annette writes a short little blurb, and then Kendi fills the page with all the details.  Here is what we got today:

From Annette, "Today Zola enjoyed outside time riding the boat, playing with pom poms taking them out of a container.  I talked to her about the different sizes of the pom poms and the textures of them.  She also enjoyed playing with the telephone."

From Kendi, "Awesome day!  Full of lovable hugs, laughs, smiles!  Zola and Roy had a good time playing in the treehouse, babbling, giggling to one another and of course squealing.  Too adorable!  Their favorite toys outside are the Pre-K shoes.  She will always go for the pink shoes and carry them to us with that sweet grin.  So adorable!  She played nicely with her friends!  We had children music playing.  She was bouncing up and down to the music, clapping her hands.  Too cute!  We had story time.  I read Whose Baby Is It?, ABC Look At Me, and Farm Animals.  She loves it when we tickle her; then she enjoys tickling the younger babies.  So adorable! Played on the foam blocks and automobiles."

So thankful for a great daycare that has loved and nurtured all three of my kiddos!

Sleepytime tea

A few days or weeks ago, I posted on Facebook: "Pondering the dissolution of bedtime. You can "make" them go to bed, but you can't make them go to sleep. Maybe I just need to go all Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle on them."  I loved Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books growing up.  I think I still have one.  She was the wise older lady who gave great advice to parents whose children were misbehaving.  Like the kid who wouldn't take a bath.  She told the parents not to make the child bathe.  To cover him with a fine dirt and sprinkle seeds.  And after a few days, plants started growing on him.  And then he would take a bath without complaint.  Or the kid who wouldn't pick up her toys.  So her parents didn't make her.  And then she got trapped in her room and couldn't get out when Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle was taking the children on a parade around the neighborhood.  So she cleaned them up and learned her lesson.  Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle was wise like that.

I think the sleep example I'm thinking of may actually be The Cosby Show, though.  When Rudy wants a later bedtime, so her parents say she can stay up as late as she wants.  And eventually she's so exhausted that it's affecting her at school and she can't enjoy the rest of her life.  But regardless, we went through a period of weeks when it seemed none of our children would go to sleep.  And somehow, we got to the other side.  Some of these things we did, I think.  But others were probably a result of those phases that kids go through.  Who knows.

Zola has always gone to sleep well.  I (with help from my mom, while I was on a trip) had to get her to sleep through the night, but she's never cried at bedtime.  She got her pacifier, laid down, grabbed her blanket, and went to sleep -- on her belly with her but in the air.  That was it.  She hardly moved all night.  But then a month ago I decided she needed to get rid of the pacifier.  We went cold turkey.  I did the first two nights when Wes was working and wouldn't have to hear her cry.  I rocked her, sang to her, and put her down.  I went down every 10-15 minutes to calm her down.  After 60-90 minutes, she would give in and go to sleep.  And for at least four weeks I tried this.  Every 4-5 days, I would get a night when she only cried for 20 minutes.  Or a few when she would cry for 3 and then go to sleep.  Some nights I would stay down there and just talk to her when she cried.  Some nights I would pat her back, which kept her from crying, and left my hand on her until she fell completely asleep and I could tiptoe out.  I don't know exactly how that's better than a pacifier, but I was giving it a go.  Then my family came into town for Oliver's birthday.  One night she fell asleep faster than ever before.  The next night she was screaming at the top of her lungs for 20 minutes before I got her back up.  My mom held her, and she finally fell dead asleep and went down.  Some days after that, decided I just couldn't do it.  Letting her cry for at least an hour every night just seemed dumb.  For a whole month, she never had a pacifier.  I never caved and gave it to her.  I never let her have it at nap.  In fact, she'll go down in the very same crib at naptime and not cry.  But bedtime was different, and no amount of "sleep training" was working.  Hearing her cry every night made me physically tense.  I was angry at her for not going to sleep.  I was tense with the other kids.  I was mad at myself for not being able to fix the problem.  So I've gone back to the pacifier -- for now.  I'll try again when she's 18 months, and I might try some kind of intermediary like I did with Emmeline -- a gumdrop pacifier in her case, to give her something to soothe but that wouldn't stay in as easily.  For now, I think it's better for all of us.

Emmeline, on the other hand, has never easily fallen asleep.  When she was a baby, she nursed and rocked to sleep and used a pacifier.  Then I stopped nursing.  Then we got rid of the pacifier.  For a few days and weeks, she would cry for about five minutes and then fall asleep.  But she never just went to bed.  And she still doesn't.  She talks and sings and squirms around in her bed.  When we moved to the new house, we had to put a lock on her door to keep her in her room because she wouldn't stay in there.  She'd come out with 15 requests and questions after bedtime, and before we knew it, it was an hour later than when we laid her bed.  Sometimes she'd go into Oliver's room.  Sometimes he'd tell us, but usually they'd just play until I heard them down there.  I tried sitting next to her room for as long as it took for her to go to sleep, just to keep her in bed.  But once I stopped, she began again, and so we did the lock.  Now she doesn't try to come out, and we don't have to put the lock on.  So long as I put her on the toilet right before bed, she usually doesn't have an excuse.  She still sings and talks, but we even seem to have minimized that.  We get the kids into bedtime soon after dinner now, and then we either play a game, read books, or watch 20 minutes of a show or movie.  But every night, I read Emmeline the same two books up in her bed -- Llama Llama Nighty Night and If I Could Keep You Little.  She knows every word but still wants to read them over and over and over again.  There's no decisions about what to read.  We read those.  If we read other books, it's earlier and on the couch in the living room.  Every night, though, is these two books in her bed.  Then I plug in a nightlight that projects the solar system onto her ceiling, turn out the overhead light, and tell her she can look at the books until she falls asleep.  And she rarely comes out.  I've never seen anything like it with her before this.

And then there's Oliver.  Who doesn't nap and hasn't in years.  Who went through a few weeks of sleeping in really late.  He gets ready for bed with his sister and reads or watches with her, but most nights he gets another 20 minutes.  We let him work on his Lego sets that have pieces too small for his sisters.  Or he works on his road track in his room until he's sleepy.  Or, like Emme, he looks at books in bed.  Most nights we even say goodnight and tell him to turn off his light when he's tired.  We go back 20-30 minutes later, and his light is out and he's asleep.  He was never one to get up much, and he doesn't now unless he needs to use the bathroom.

We've also taught Emme to come into our room -- not Oliver's -- when she wakes up, which means he's sleeping to a more reasonable hour than her.  Actually, 6:30 is pretty normal for a 2-year-old, just sometimes earlier than I'd like to get up!

I know as time passes their sleep cycles will change.  It's fall, the weather is beautiful, and the kids are getting plenty of outdoor time to wear themselves out.  Winter may be more challenging if they're too still.  But for now, it does seem to have improved.  And there does seem to be a commonality with the big kids that letting them "do something" quietly after tuck-in time lets them decide when they're ready to lie down and fall asleep.  That Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.  She's a smart lady.  

A first

Zola is now one.  I no longer have an infant in my home, but the toddler I have gained is something to behold.  She is walking, everywhere and all the time.  She is trying very hard to communicate, though there are no clear words there.  Today she was sitting in the yard, and I was in a chair on the driveway.  She got fussy and put up her arms towards me said, "Mama."  It's the clearest I've seen her direct a word, correctly, at something or someone.  She has clear wants and a temper that's come out.  When she's mad, she falls on the floor and throws her head back, sometimes with a whack that leads to a whole new set of tears.  She lovey and likes to be in my lap whenever possible, though terribly squirmy while there.  She likes shoes -- any she can find.  She still has a belly.

I decided to do a first birthday party for Zola for a few reasons.  I've done one for the other two kids, but that was at age two, when I thought they could understand a little more.  Plus I always had ulterior motives for those parties.  With Oliver, we had been in our house for a little over a year, had met a lot of neighbors, and we were finally settled enough to let people in to see what we'd "done" with the place.  It worked out as a chance to socialize with people we otherwise only really talked to in the front yard or in passing.  With that tradition in place, I tried the same thing with Emmeline.  We were about to move to our new house and ready to share the news that Zola was coming home to us soon.  Unfortunately, horrible weather meant that almost no one came, and we were left with hoards of cupcakes.  So when Zola's first birthday approached, I thought that the same setup -- cupcakes, no presents, invite the neighbors -- would be a great way to see more of our new neighbors, many of whom we hardly ever see, and let them see our children.  A lot of people came and introduced themselves to Wes while I was overseas with Zola, and I thought it would be fun for those same people to see that little girl celebrate her first year.  But it was more than that.  I don't have as many memories with Zola as I did with the other two at age one.  And more importantly, I don't have as many memories for Zola later in life.  I thought doing a party would be a great way to celebrate a day we weren't originally there for and to make some memories of her early childhood sooner rather than later.
Her actual birthday was on a Friday, and we did a few fun things then, too.  She wore her birthday shirt, a tradition I started with Oliver at age 3 and his little sisters have done from the beginning.  I thought it went just great with her tutu, and the teachers at daycare just loved it.  We put up the birthday sign, too, and Oliver and Emmeline were very excited to tell everyone that Zola was now one.  Since Oliver had baseball practice that night, and Zola is often in bed by 7PM, we didn't do anything special for dinner.  I did give her the one gift we bought for her -- a Fischer Price toy she'd loved at her cousin's house.  It talks and plays

music, and she'll push the buttons until she gets a song and then dance.

On Saturday, my parents came into town. I'd invited them to join us, knowing we were going to do a little party of some kind, and they were able to come.  I made the party a bunny theme, since that's Zola's animal -- her lovey named Lapin (French for bunny), the image on a t-shirt I bought for her before she even came home.  Plus our backyard is full of bunny rabbits.  Brown ones at that.  My mom and I made orange, strawberry, and carrot cupcakes, which seemed fitting with the backyard, bunny theme.  I made unsweetened tea and lemon water.  And the kids bagged snack sizes of Annie's Organic bunnies, in case anyone needed a snack.  The weather was beautiful in the afternoon, when we had it.  It was looking like rain, but the skies stayed pretty clear until well after we cleaned up.  Maybe a dozen people ended up coming, a few neighbors, a few friends from school and work.  The kids played hard, a few people brought cards and gifts, but mostly the adults just stood and talked. It was simple.  It was fun.  Memories were made.

Celebrating Zola's first birthday was something different than with Oliver and Emmeline.  It somehow seemed more important to do.  We are not big birthday people, and there was nothing about their first birthdays that made me feel like it needed special noting.  But this was a way to show her that of all the things we wish, we would give anything to tell her more about the day she came into the world and the first few weeks afterwards.  In reality, we don't know when Zola came into this world.  But every year, on this day, we will celebrate that she was.

Steps in the right direction

Steps.  Just one at a time here and there, so not a series of them or any real ambulation. But we definitely saw steps for the first time today. Wow!

There and back

This past weekend, the kids and I took a trip to see my sister, her husband, and my youngest nephew at their home outside of Savannah.  It was a trip that I took with much hesitation.  I've driven to Laura's place and back several times, at least twice with kids.  It takes about 8 hours total if there's only a littel traffic in the major towns.  Sometimes I do it in two days and spend one night at my parent's house.  Once I flew from Nashville, with Emmeline when she was nine weeks old, but it's expensive and there's a layover and with three kids, it's that much more.  Plus, Laura and Reid don't have a vehicle big enough to hold all of us once there.  So if I was going, I was going to drive.  I planned the trip.  Then thought I wouldn't go.  Then thought I'd wait until we got closer to see how everyone's behavior was.  Then thought I'd just go for it.  I really wanted to see Laura and Reid and Maddox and let the kids do the fun things we'd get to do while there.  Laura had only seen Zola for a day or so before this trip, and Reid hadn't met her at all.  So I decided to go for it.

Within a few days of the trip, I talked with my mom, and then she with me, and she said she'd come with me so I had someone else in the car.  This turned out to be helpful in about a thousand ways.  She stayed at a hotel near Laura's house so that she could sleep comfortably, but it also meant that she could take a child with her.  So the older kids took turns going to the hotel with Grandma, riding the elevator, sleeping in the hotel room, and eating at the buffet breakfast.  It was great that they got to not only see their aunt, uncle, and cousin but also make some special memories with Grandma.  She got to hear the chatter one can only really enjoy when there's one kid at a time, and she even got to hear Emmeline's bedtime melodies, which I normally hear down the hall but was audience to in person when we stayed in Chicago.

The night before we were leaving on the trip, Emmeline sat at the dinner table and vomited everywhere.  I almost stopped packing the car at that moment, but she'd seemed so perfectly fine up to that moment I hoped it was just a random incident.  Wes said after the fact that she seemed like she chocked on some food and it hit her gag reflex.  Whatever it was, she wasn't sick for the trip.  Unfortunately, that wasn't true for all of us.

I'd decided beforehand to get up really early and drive to Atlanta before breakfast.  I thought the kids would sleep, and then we could meet some new friends at a park near my parents' house, have breakfast, and wait out downtown Atlanta traffic.  The plan worked pretty well, too.  Oliver and Emmeline were interested in the dark, but after a little while, they fell back asleep. I'd moved Emmeline to the back seat and turned her around for the ride there.  I wanted her to be able to sleep, and the carseat tips back better when installed rear-facing.  Unfortunately, Oliver is in a booster seat, and there was no getting comfortable for him.  He would fall asleep, and his head would bob around.  He was clear uncomfortable and got grouchy, and I felt so bad. I couldn't show him how to use the neck pillow or how to stack some pillows on his side to prop onto.  They all woke up just before getting to my mom's house in pretty good moods.

We met our new friends -- really a friend of a friend who I knew only online -- at a wonderful park near my parents' house.  Sheila brought breakfast, and I pulled out some of the food I'd included in the extensive packing I'd done for the trip, too.  The kids played beautifully together -- almost too well!  Somehow -- well, we knew it was happening... -- all four older kids ended up in the lake, soaking wet in their pajamas and clothes.  And Zola wound up with a scalp full of sand.  I managed to clean up Ollie and Emme and get them in regular clothes to leave around 9am, and with mom in tow, we headed back out.

I don't remember the rest of the trip being too bad.  Mom and I talked.  She helped Oliver try to get comfortable to nap some.  She gave Zola her pacifier and someone to talk to.  She handed out electronics to entertain and generally played games with the kids.  And I drove. And drove.  And drove.  We had lunch at Arby's and got to Pooler mid-afternoon.  I was so happy to just be there and know our driving was half done!

Over the next few days, we had a lot of fun.  I took the older kids to the pool several times.  Emmeline got to use her new shark bite float.  Oliver rode his two-wheeler around the very flat and safe neighborhood, and Emme even got out on her tricycle.  Zola got several baths to remove sand from her hair.  We crowded all eight people into our mini-van to drive various places, twice to the marina to go out on Reid's new boat (the highlight of the weekend).  We had dinner at the Crab Shack out on the water, which went pretty well considering we had four young children with us.  We did deal with an Emme accident at the table, but since our table was outside, we were able to more easily remedy the situation.  On Saturday, we all went out to the beach on the boat and met a bunch of Laura and Reid's friends there.  We had a great time.  The older kids loved the water and swam without too much supervision (but life jackets), and the babies were happy at the surf.  Zola would sit with me at the edge of the water and just laugh every time the water came up.  She was covered in sand, all up through her diaper, but just as happy as could be.  Unfortunately, a nasty storm cut our time out a little short and made for a harrowing boat ride back into the marina.  I'll be honest, I cried a little.  I had Emmeline on my lap, a towel over her head to protect her from the stinging rain, and while I knew my brother-in-law was perfectly capable, the scene was just too scary to bear without a few tears.  Maybe it's my fear of dying in the ocean.

Sunday was a lot quieter.  We went to church, and that was my first indication that all were not well.  I left Zola in child care, fully expecting her to cry when I left, but instead she just sat there.  When we went to get her, after a long church service, she dead asleep in the middle of the floor, where she had reportedly been since I dropped her off.  I fed her lunch, and she was ready to nap again.  A nap that went on and on into the afternoon.  When I got her up mid-afternoon, she had a 103 fever and was clearly lethargic.  I dosed her with meds to bring down the fever, and we just all took turns holding her. She was so sad!  That night, Laura did a movie night for the kids.  She had little cups of M&Ms, a popcorn box, and they watch most of Underdog.  Everyone slept well the whole trip, which made for a much more enjoyable visit.  I put Zola to sleep in a playpen downstairs, and one big kid to sleep in my bed, then transferred -- Oliver to the other side of the bed, Emmeline to a little bed on the floor for fear of her rolling off of the fairly high bed.

Yesterday morning Zola was unchanged. She still had a very high fever and just seemed unwell.  We made the decision to leave a day early so that I could take her to the doctor today if she wasn't better.    I did most, but not all, of the driving on the way back.  My mom drove through downtown Atlanta. We were ahead of go-home traffic, but it was still really busy, and I knew I still had 3+ more hours to go.  Once at their house, my mom kept Zola at home to sit and play while my dad and I took the big kids to a pool to work out some energy.  We were there 45 minutes, but it was enough to wear them out a little.  Zola slept almost the whole way home still, and the kids did pretty well.

I'm glad to be home, though the doctors don't really know what's wrong with Zola.  I wouldn't worry as much except she had some other kind of virus a week before we left.  They think this is different, so it's probably okay, but always scary when a kid is sick for so long.  But mostly I'm glad we went.  The kids keep talking about the beach, the boat ride, and the fun they had.  We don't get to see family all the time with the distance between us, but I love the memories they're making when we're able to get together!

The third, or about Zola

I have a special connection with each of my children because of who they are in the family.  Oliver is my firstborn, which means all of my firsts as a mom were with him.  Emme is the big sister, like I am in my family.  And Zola is the third child, also like me in my family.  And so I will hope she will forgive me that I have done such a poor job documenting her first few months on the blog.  Part of that is that, well, I now have three children.  Life is busy.  Part is that it’s been a different kind of transition, and I didn’t feel I was doing as good a job transitioning her into our family as I did with the first two.  And in my stew, I hesitated to write anything down that might suggest her addition to our family was anything was seamless.  But now that things are more settled I will attempt to document as much as I can – and keep up from here on out.

Zola is ten months now.  She’s been with me for over five months, home for four and a half, and in my arms for almost as long as she was out of them.  She’s definitely attached to us, all of us, and I would say I know her pretty well, though as with all young children, I’m learning more every day.  She seems to be developing normally and is ahead of her siblings in some fine and gross motor skills.  She learned to sit well around six months.  She was rolling to get to things within a few weeks of that.  And shortly thereafter, around seven-and-a-half or eight months, had developed a crawl that allowed her to get around pretty well on our wood and stone floors.  She was truly crawling at nine months, but does so with her left foot and right knee.  When she’s on rough or uneven terrain, she crab walks.  She seems like she really wants to just stand up and walk, but we’re probably another month or more away, though she can now hold my hand and walk along next to me pretty well.  She still does this funny three-point sit on her hip with her legs over each other and one arm in the air.  It’s truly a Zola pose that she did from early on.  She learned to pull herself up around eight months and now cruises some around the furniture.  Her daycare teacher said she stood up and stayed upright for several seconds last week.  And last month she crawled up our stairs from the sunroom to the kitchen, though she doesn’t know how to go down them – safely anyway.  Fortunately, she seems to now realize their danger and usually sits at the top and fusses.

As far as personality, Zola is a bit of a mix.  She is really happy and sweet when she’s not tired or hungry or wanting someone to pick her up.  When she is any of those things, she can be very fussy and loud, and her cries are particularly painful.  She has a whine that drives me bonkers and I really hope goes away when she learns to talk.  I’m trying to teach her some signs now – mostly “more” and “food/eat” and “please.”  Zola has always been a very curious baby.  She watches people very closely, stares even.  When she’s in the back carrier, she’ll lean over hard to one side to see around me at whatever is the focus of my attention.  She likes textures, always wanting to touch everything and run things through her fingers.  She’s a toddler, and like most, loves to put things in her mouth, but with a zeal I’ve never seen before.  She’s extremely determined – to get to the one thing you’re trying to keep her away from, for example – and she cries when I tell her “no” too sharply or take what she wants.  But in general, she’s a happy baby when she’s not unhappy.  She’s got this hilarious belly laugh that comes out when she gets giggling really hard.  She loves being with her siblings and is usually pretty content if being held or carried by me or Wes.  She seems to know her grandmothers well enough not to fuss for them now.  And she’s more or less adjusted to daycare in her first five days.  She cried hard the first two days at dropoff but calmed down after I left.  The third day she didn’t fuss at all, and the last two days it’s just been a little wail when I walked out the door.  It was both a blessing and a curse to see her cry as I left.  I hated that she was so sad, but it also meant that she knew me as her mom. She didn’t cry once when she left her foster mother.  She smiled at me, and she was happy with me thereafter.  And it wasn’t for a lack of attention from her foster family, as they clearly loved her very much.  But Zola seemed to adjust very quickly to her life with me and in our family, perhaps even faster than we did to her.

Zola is still a thick baby, and while I think she’ll eventually thin out a bit, I don’t doubt she’ll always have a fuller figure than Emme.  It’s just how she’s made.  She does seem a bit more trim as she’s moving so much more.  She eats very well, though, and after waning a bit after learning to crawl, her appetite is once again pretty big.  She has breakfast, lunch, and dinner with table food and some baby food that she can self-feed, and then two 6-8-ounce bottles mid-morning and mid-afternoon.  She does really well with table food and seems to prefer it to the baby purees (though I mostly use them to get her lots of fruit and vegetables).  She can drink from a sippy cup but doesn’t hesitate to hold it upside down and let water or juice drip out, so it’s still just at the table.  She can drink from a straw, so I’ll give her yogurt smoothies or sips of my water that way.  She still has an unnatural attachment to her bottles. She freaks out when she sees one and will not calm down until it’s in her hands.  She’s been able to hold her own bottle pretty well since around six months if lying on her back, but now she can also drink the whole thing sitting up.  She almost always cries when it’s gone.  It’s the one thing I – whether at all true or not – think is somehow connected to her experiences in Congo – of being hungry and just not having enough. 

The other thing Zola loves to do – and is painful without – is sleep.  There are days when she still sleeps as much as a newborn.  When she first came home she would take naps on and off throughout the day without too much of a schedule.  She was up several times at night for a bottle until she really started eating baby food.  With some effort (swing + pacifier + letting her fuss and hoping she’d go back to sleep), I got her down to one middle-of-the-night bottle, and when my mom kept her while I was at a conference in Caly, she got rid of that feed, too.  We tried having her sleep lots of different places – in the cosleeper, in the cosleeper in the master closet, in her crib in the girls’ room, in a playpen in our room, in a playpen in the basement bedroom – and eventually found that she and I sleep best when she is in the basement bedroom.  She might be fine back upstairs now, but I’m hesitant to try it out for fear of upsetting her routine.  Downstairs, she sleeps in a perfectly dark, quiet, cool room without anyone interrupting her.  Upstairs she would go to sleep but inevitably be woken by the older two going to bed themselves.  Or she would wake in the middle of the night for a 20-minute chat (with herself?) while I lay awake in bed waiting for her to go back to sleep.  There was definitely more crying involved in getting into our final routine, but now that it’s done, I don’t regret it.  I think she would have kept waking up to eat as long as I let her.  And I’ve never found anything that helps her fall asleep when she’s fighting it.  Holding or rocking her calms her down, but it doesn’t help her sleep.  At this point it’s not an issue, though, and she usually lies down, head down on the mattress, butt up in the air, just waiting for a blanket.  She likes one to stay warm but also to hold in her hand while she’s asleep.  Since starting daycare, she’s definitely  more tired in the evenings.  She went from about four hours of nap per day to 1 ½.  We’ve been putting her to bed earlier at night and letting her nap a lot on the days she’s home, but overall she’s adjusted to the shorter naps pretty well.  I think that, like with Emme when she was in the infant room, there’s just too much going on during naptime for her to sleep outside the midday one.

Like with Oliver and Emme, Wes has given Zola any number of nicknames.  She’s usually Z or Big Z, but she’s also Squeezy, which seems to fit her.  She knows her name and will turn her head when called – if there’s not something more interesting nearby.  More than anything, she is uniquely her own.  As much as Oliver and Emmeline are distinct personalities, Zola is yet another that is unlike either of theirs.  She’s loud.  She loves to talk.  She loves people and being with them.  I don’t see her being as shy as either Oliver or Emmeline are as toddlers and preschoolers.  She’s not quiet like Ollie, but she’s not reckless like Emme, either.  She has the single-minded focus that Oliver sometimes has, but the stubbornness that Emmeline does.  Every day reminds me that’s changing, though.  It took months – and listening to at least a  hundred different people tell me, “Looks like her top teeth are about to come in” – for her top teeth to emerge.  But now they’re there, and she has an adorable gap between them.  And she got two more bottom teeth at the same time.  Her hair has grown in around the back, making it necessary for me to once again consult websites about easy baby hairstyles for African hair.  If Zola has taught me one thing in her few months home, it’s that just because she’s the third doesn’t mean I don’t have lots still to learn about being a mom.

Face it

And then there were three

Cry baby

She didn't cry the day I met her. She didn't cry the whole way home. But nearly five months after meeting my youngest daughter, I left her crying in the infant room at daycare. For an adoptive momma, it's both a blessing and a curse -- to know that your child now knows you as her first source of comfort and then to take it away and know that it's so confusing for her. Hoping she calms down soon and comes to love the wonderful women who were also Emmeline's first daycare teachers!

Too much Mary Poppins

This morning, I was warning Zola to stay away from our fireplace, and Oliver wanted to know why she couldn't go in there. "It's dirty and dangerous," I told him. "Will she fly up the chimney if she goes in there?" he asked

A spring day

She really does!

Three of a kind (working on a full house)

"B" is for baby

Reading "Ten Tiny Babies" to Zola

Eating frozen lemonade at the Sevier Farmer's Market

New pajamas from Aunt Laura and Uncle Reid

1, 2, 3

This is when Zola had just learned to scoot, and she often found herself
(and we her) under the table.

Darling

Me and Zola

A few weeks ago, I opened a new package of pull-ups for Emmeline.  I usually get both the "boy pulls-ups" and the "girl pull-ups" for her, since she likes the design on both.  This was the first time she'd worn the "girl" ones since Zola came home though.  When I handed this one to her, Emme looked at the front and said very matter-of-factly, "It's me and Zola."

Indeed.

Sun sisters

"Rubber ducky, I'm awfully fond of you."

(Re)adopted

Three months ago and half a world away, I met Zola for the first time. Today we completed her readoption and name change. She now has her momma's (and paternal grandmother's) name as a middle name and her Congolese adoption has been recognized by the state.

Visitors from the south