When Nick and Ivy Janzen went to their local Walmart with their 5-month-old daughter earlier this week, they had no idea they would go viral.
While waiting in line inside the store, Nick lifted up their little bundle of joy, Kira, to one of the security cameras for a funny close-up. Ivy snapped a photo of the adorable moment and shared it with her Facebook friends.
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Little did they know, Nick’s sister spotted the photo and shared it on Twitter with her 1,600-plus followers on Thursday, which she captioned as: “absolutely losing it over this picture of my brother with his baby.”
Nick and Kira Janzen stole the show at a Kansas-based Walmart this week, which is a moment that has gone viral. (Credit: Ivy Janzen)
Within five days, Nick and Kira’s Walmart photo has been liked more than 1.3 million times and retweeted more than 187,800 times.
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“[My sister] told us, ‘Hey, I put a picture up of Kira and Nick and it’s kind of blowing up. It’s like 500,000 likes,’ or something at that time,” Nick shared with Fox News in a phone call.
“And it just kept going up and up from there. And then it was shared on Instagram and it got so many likes. I think it got over a million likes on an Instagram post as well. And then I saw it on Facebook and I had a whole bunch of friends tagging me. And they were like, ‘Is this your baby? Is this Kira?’” Ivy added. “It was just everywhere.”
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Although many commenters have compared the photo to the iconic moment when Rafiki holds Simba in “The Lion King,” the Janzens insist they weren’t trying to recreate the scene. However, they do admit they have laughed at some of the memes social media users have created.
“In the checkout line, I just noticed the camera and monitor and picked Kira up, and Ivy took the picture,” Nick explained. “She convinced me to do it. I was on the fence about doing it, but Ivy said it would be funny and that we should do it. So we just did it.”
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“The coolest thing to me is all the comments,” he added. “Everybody’s real sweet. They’re like, this is the funniest thing I’ve seen today. This made me smile.”
For Ivy, Nick and Kira’s viral moment makes her feel validated.
“It’s very nice to hear how cute she is because I’ve always known that,” Ivy shared in reference to Kira. “But, now it’s objectively true.”
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