the weekly 'what's up'.

HAPPY JUNE, and HAPPY FRIDAY!  This week has been so weird.  Each day when I woke up, I'd have to reorient myself by figuring out what day it actually was.  Tuesday felt like Thursday, Wednesday felt like Monday, it was all so jumbled!  Did anyone else feel this way?  Maybe it was because of the holiday on Monday, but dang... I just never fully felt like I was on top of the week.

We had a full, eventful week nonetheless.  On Saturday, Callista turned eleven months old!  I am just in shock.  She is almost a year.  A whole year.  I am just stunned.  I'll have to do an update post soon.

After naps on Saturday, we headed over to a friend's place to swim in the pool at their complex.  It was so much fun - the pool setup was perfect for families with multiple ages of kids, and I felt like I was easily able to keep an eye on everyone.  That's honestly the main reason that we haven't been 'pool people' in the past - I just get so worried that something will happen on my watch with so many kids to keep a lookout for.  But the kids had a ball, I felt everything was safe and easy to supervise, and we will definitely be planning on weekly or near-weekly trips over the summer!  (Unfortunately, we didn't get any photos because we were too busy keeping the kids from drowning.  Oh, well.)

On Sunday, we had church in the park, and afterwards the kids played on the playground equipment for a bit.  In the 97-degree heat.  In their church clothes.  It was intense.

We booked it out of there before anyone melted, but Atticus was beginning to show signs of heat stroke, so we probably should have left even sooner.

By the afternoon, Rocco woke up from nap with a raging fever, and he suddenly developed a cough.  By Monday morning, not only had his cough radically worsened to the point of wheezing, gagging, and gasping for air, but Laurelai also had a fever.

So that's how we spent our Memorial Day.  It's always something around here.

I spent a few days cuddling them, and force-feeding Laurelai liquids with supplements in them.  (I had taken the kids off of dairy to hopefully thin out some of the mucus in their chests, but Laurelai will drink literally nothing other than raw milk.  Not store-bought milk.  Not water.  Not juice.  Not kombucha.  Not tea with honey.  She was so dehydrated by Wednesday night, after three full days of refusing liquids, that I finally gave in and let her have the milk back.  I thought she would eventually get so thirsty she would cave and drink something else, but I was wrong.  That girl is stubborn.)

Monday night, the fever hit Callista, and I was up nursing her constantly until about 4:00 a.m.  She just would not sleep.  I even tried laying in her crib with her to get her to calm down, but she would only doze off if I was standing up and holding her, or rocking her in the rocking chair.  It was a long night.

Even though we cancelled all of our appointments and get-togethers for the week, we did head up to the Amish on Tuesday, because I'd placed an order for some strawberries from my friend Irene, who was in a hurry that morning to get to a wedding.  I didn't want her waiting around for me to get there, not knowing that I wasn't coming, and running late to the wedding herself.  (And I obviously couldn't call her to let her know we wouldn't be coming.)  So we made the drive there and back as quickly and efficiently as possible.  For our troubles, we came home with our standard load of milk and eggs, some fresh goat milk for Callista (I'm trying to move her to a sippy cup), plus twelve and a half pounds of strawberries.

Tuesday night, I made a quart of strawberry sauce, and I got the rest of them in the freezer for later - over a gallon and a half of frozen berries!

The rest of the week has been spent laying low.  Finneas came down with the cough on Wednesday, but I think because I've been pumping him with supplements from the beginning of this round of illness, he hasn't been hit nearly as hard.  The big two haven't seemed to be touched at all, so they've spent most of our down time doing school and playing outside.

Excellent diversionary tactics: "This is not the warship you are looking for."

This is a ladybug named Bob who now lives in a box in our yard.  At least, we think it's a ladybug?  It's red, not orange, so I don't *think* it's a Japanese beetle, but I really have no idea.

Whew.  I am always amazed, when I sit down to write these posts each week, how much we fit into a single week.  I honestly feel like our lives are pretty low-key and slow-moving, and then I look at everything we've done over the course of the week and thank God for all of the fullness and fun without the stress of being packed too full.  There is a rhythm to our days, even when we're dealing with illness, and I love that the kids are being given time to just be.  I feel like we're in a season that holds a good balance of both 'doing' and 'being'.  It's a good life!