'what's up' bi-weekly.

Because I've been a no-show around here for a while, I actually have two weeks of life to catch you up on, and they've been really full weeks, so brace yourself.

We kicked off the last stretch with some routine surgery.  You know.  The way people just casually say stuff like that.  To be more specific, Atticus had quite a few mouth ties that he needed to have released in order to keep moving forward with his braces process, so Todd took the day off work to drive him to Kansas City for the appointment.  They used a laser to release his tongue tie, as well as four tethers in his cheeks.  It was a major ordeal, and Atticus spent a few days in quite a bit of pain, eating only very soft foods and resting a lot.  We're still in the healing stages, working on stretching exercises with him and applying different healing methods.  He had his follow up appointment this past week, and things are looking good, but still aren't fully back to normal working order.  We have photos of the gory details, but I'll spare you.

Luckily, his mouth was feeling better by Thanksgiving, so we all piled into the Kristy Chrysler and headed up to my mom's for a few days.  Penelope and I had spent the previous couple of days preparing a few things to take for the big day, including Penelope's special cranberry sauce, which she made entirely independently this year.  I got brave and made some pate (I don't have an Apple keyboard, so imagine an little accent mark on the end of 'pate,' so I don't look like a complete pagan), but otherwise just planned to wing a cheese platter for lunch, which required very little advance prep.

HOWEVER.  The prep time on the actual day of was more involved than it needed to be, as I just sat there for over an hour, completely reveling in making things pretty and snacking as I went.

As luck would have it, lunch was a hit with all the kids.

Funnily enough, Callista's very favorite part was the pate, which she kept demanding I hand-feed her.  What. A. Diva.  "You, there.  Servant.  Feed me fancy foods.  Straight from your fingers.  MORE.  MORE, I SAY."

We thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the day relaxing, helping in the kitchen, eating entirely too much (my mom made gluten-free stuffing, so I gorged myself as though I was trying to make up for all the lost years of stuffingless-Thanksgivings), and spending time with family.  My sister and brother-in-law were there, along with my tiny, perfect new niece, Hyler.  It was the first time the kids got to meet her, and they were enamored.

The next day was Black Friday, and instead of attempting any shopping shenanigans, we hunkered down for a day of crafting, "daddy dates" with a few of the kids, and playing outside.  (Have I told you before that I've never once been Black Friday shopping?  I'm more than okay with that, too.  I feel like the crowds would just send me into full-on catatonia.)

The next day we celebrated Atticus' upcoming (TENTH.  No, God.  No!) birthday by going to the Science Center to see the Lego exhibit, and having a party at my mom's house.  I'll post more on that once he's actually ten, if the Lord doesn't return before then and spare us, like I've been praying.

We headed for home Saturday night, since the Blizzard Of The Century!!!!!!! was predicted for Sunday.  Callista snuggled in for the ride.

We got home to discover Stumpi had survived our 3.5-day absence, which was welcome news.  I'd put an extra dish of water in her cage, and had sprinkled some extra food around, but she often dumps her water out and refuses to eat anything less-than-fresh, so I wasn't sure it would be adequate care for our longer-than-average truancy.  But it turns out she's a stalwart little thing, and I love her all the more for it.  We could not have landed a more perfect pet for our hands-off approach to pet care.

This week has been full of our 'old' ordinary, and a 'new' ordinary I'm attempting to instate.  I'll maybe blog about it more in-depth at some point, but I'm making a few changes in the name of being intentional and building an actual culture in our home.  So I've been playing music more, limiting my time on social media, and trying to be present with the kids.  Not a single dinner this week has involved nuggets of any kind.  Hot dang, y'all.  I served my kids tea.  I even baked bread.  WHO AM I?!  I can feel the winds of change blowing.

On Wednesday night, we took the kids to pick out our Christmas tree.  It was frickin' freezing, Mr. Bigglesworth, so I really have no idea if we picked the best one they had, or if it was just the best one I could find in ten minutes or less.  Either way, we'll be bringing it in tonight, and decorating it tomorrow, and after that it is going to get full-on Christmas in here.  I CANNOT WAAAAAAIT!

Whew!  And here ends an ENTIRE WEEK OF BLOG POSTS!  I told you the winds of change are a-blowing.

how we store toothbrushes to avoid sharing germs.

This seems like a dumb topic to post about, but I will tell you that I have mentally labored over the toothbrush problem for months, so I have zero issues believing that maybe one of you can get some use out of this little tip.

We don't have any vertical storage in our bathroom.  Our mirror doesn't have a cabinet behind it, and other than cavernous cabinet space under the sink, all we have to work with is drawers.  All the kids would toss their toothbrushes into the same drawer, where they'd mingle together, all wet and spitty, until the next toothbrushing session.  This is gross enough.

But add to that the fact that we brush with bar soap at our house, and they were all sharing the same bar of soap.  Last winter, when we could just NOT kick the stomach bug for four straight months, it did occur to me that the bar soap situation wasn't doing us any favors.

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A while ago, I mentioned on the blog that I brush my teeth with soap and baking soda. No morning breath, fewer coffee stains, no weird chemicals in my mouth - win/win/win! This is my new favorite kind to use.

A post shared by Paige Van Voorst (@theminivanvoorsts) on Feb 5, 2018 at 9:53am PST

So this fall, I decided we needed to make some proactive changes to prevent so much intimate contact with one another's germs, just for overall hygiene reasons, and to hopefully prevent illness from running completely unchecked for another winter.

I started by buying each of them a color-coded travel set for their toothbrush and soap.  (I've told you before that my kids all have their own assigned colors for everything, right?  Atticus is blue, Penelope is pink, Finneas is green, Laurelai is purple, Rocco is red, and Callista doesn't yet have an assigned color.  It makes it SO easy to keep everyone's stuff organized to be able to figure out the owner of something at a quick glance.)

Then, I cut a couple of bars of soap down, since the soap we use isn't super cheap so I didn't want to buy five whole bars, and because a single bar of soap lasts FOREVER when only being used for toothpaste.

Then I just put everything in an easily-bleached plastic tub under the sink.

All my fingers and toes are crossed that this will do some massive prevention of cross-contamination this winter!

rocco turned three! (a long time ago.)

Okay, so Rocco turned three almost an entire month ago, but I've been a veritable turd around here, so it hasn't gotten documented.  Until now.

We threw him a small party, and my mom made cupcakes to celebrate.

We were all (clearly) excited for present time!

This little guy is such a joy.  He is so tough and rambunctious and up for anything crazy the bigger boys throw his way, but he'll also spend hours quietly playing pretend with the girls.  He loves doing "payakorn" (parkour) and being tickled and getting 'piddy bat' rides from his Daddy.  He is so sweet and cuddly and still has (just a little of) that toddler squishiness on him, so he's the very best to snuggle.  He's articulate and funny, and his favorite joke is a knock-knock joke: "Who's there?... Interrupting Rainbow Who?"  [dead silence, followed by his punchline, "Wainbows don't talk!"]  He is my buddy, and this world would be so much quieter and more gray without him here.

We love you, Rocky, you little stinker!

ode to this old chunk of plastic and aluminum that some people (though not young people) might call a 'phone'.

I know you guys think of me as a hip, young tech hound, with all the latest gadgets and insider .html skills.  I know I radiate the aura of someone who just stepped out of the Matrix and knows complicated internet things like how to play Minecraft.  So if you can't bear to see me in any other light, I urge you to stop reading now.  Just look away.

Here's the truth: Just because I'm a millennial doesn't mean I know how to email photos to myself from a smartphone.  Just because I know how to type a blog post on a free hosting site doesn't mean I don't still print off (black and white) MapQuest directions before getting in the car because I don't have GPS on my phone or color cartridges in my printer.  The fact that I can update my Facebook status like a sick-@$$ boss can never make up for the fact that THIS is my phone:

Yes.  This is my actual phone that I use to call people and from which I'll occasionally send a 160-character-or-less text.  Or, I should say, this is my actual phone that I used to use to call people and send texts.  Because it's starting to show its age and it no longer adequately functions to call or text.

First of all, the speaker is dying.  Or so I presume.  Maybe it's working just fine according to the speaker standards of the days of yore, and no one was ever actually able to hear anyone else all along, and those Verizon commercials were just tricking you into thinking it was your network that was the problem.  Whatever the case, I cannot hear a blessed thing through this phone.  A while back, I was on the phone with my sister, who sounded like she was asking me a favor, so I said 'yes', not knowing exactly what I was saying yes to.  After later calling back and apologizing for literally having no idea what I'd agreed to, I convinced her to scream her request at me this time - at which point I could enthusiastically yell back that I would indeed be honored to attend her birth if I was able to.  It turns out I was agreeing to something pretty important all along.  Good thing I made that follow-up call.

Second of all, the typing keys don't all work.  If you ever receive a text from me (fat chance, I hate texting) that includes the letter "P", you can know how deeply loved you are because I must've sat at my dining room table jamming a pen into the button for at least three full minutes in order to present you with such a gift.  Kiiiiiind of sucks that it's the P button, as that letter is integral to spelling my own freaking name, so I constantly look like a moron.

Third of all, all photos and screenshots I receive are the approximate size and color quality of a nickel.  If you've ever sent me a screenshot of anything, you can be confident that I was not only completely unable to see it, but also highly unlikely to tell you at the time because that would require a response text.  So I just pretended I saw it.

Fourth of all, incoming texts from smartphones (so, like, all incoming texts) get broken up into individual five-word messages, which means for every one text you send me, I receive about twelve individual text notifications, and of course they don't arrive in order.  I get to sit there for the next twenty minutes trying to decipher what's being communicated like I'm intercepting stuff from the Enigma.


I think you can see that I need a new phone, though that presents its own conundrums.  First of all, I don't want a smartphone.  I don't want to be attached to the internet all day.  I don't like feeling like I'm wiretapped.  I don't want the ability to Google stuff at the drop of a hat - I like living life slow and simple and relatively uninformed.  Second of all, my current non-data phone plan costs $17 a month, which I am loath to give up.  Third of all, I feel like I'm doing the hard work of maintaining our folk memory.  If no one's willing to be the guy carrying around a phone like this, pretty soon we will lose all touch with our pioneer roots, and will one day forget altogether what cell service must've been like in Laura Ingalls' day.  I'm just not sure I'm willing to pay that cost in the name of convenience.  Technology is such a slippery slope.

So I've been racking my brain for an acceptable compromise, and I think I've got it: I need a Jitterbug.  It has a loud speaker, arthritis-friendly buttons, and a classic design that has resisted our culture's obsession with the young, flashy and trendy.  It's functional and classic and tailor-made for old people, just like I like things.  Yes, the Jitterbug is definitely the way I should go.

Sure, I'll be sore tempted to B'Dazzle it, but that's true of any phone, really.

turning over a new (old) leaf.

WELL, HELLOOOOOO!

via GIPHY

I'm back, people, and I mean back.  I have laid low the last few weeks (er, months, if I'm being honest).  First it was due to morning sickness, then it was due to the ramping up of the school year, and then it was due to the Headache from the Bowels of Hell.  Also, interspersed in there was some honest-to-goodness pregnancy slowdown.

The beginning of pregnancy always starts the same for me: All the Barfs.  But along with that comes a physical and mental slowing down.  I turn inward, and kind of develop an impenetrable bubble around myself, and get really introspective, but in a very simple, almost stupid, way.  It's like I just can't rouse myself to think, act, or interact like a regular human person.  All my everything is going toward producing a baby, and no other thoughts or people exist.  Just me and the baby.

So I had no energy for people.  I had no energy for tasks.  I had no energy for thinking.  I just kind of spent four months existing, and cooking a baby, and throwing up.  And that's it.

But this week marks the halfway point of this pregnancy (yes, really!), and I can feel the tides turning.  I am feeling ambitious.  I am cleaning out my pantry, and returning texts (sometimes), and ordering Christmas presents, and actually 'seeing' my husband and kids for the first time in a while.  I am ready for the second half of pregnancy!

Because, for me, the second half of pregnancy is when my brain makes up for the haze of the first twenty weeks.  I get super organized, and super energetic, and start making lists and completing projects and finishing books.  This is the part of pregnancy that makes me worry about the day that we stop having new babies: at no point during normal life do I ever get this much accomplished.  When else will my garage get organized, and my bullet journal get filled, and my Bible reading get back on track if I have no more Second Halves to look forward to?  I'm serious.

Well, let's not worry about the distant future now.  For now, let's just revel in the advent of The Second Half!

I have decided that I will be spending December blogging every single weekday that I possibly can, which will challenge me after a long hiatus, but will be good for me to get those mental wheels grinding again.  So look forward to (or dread??!) seeing me around here a lot more in the upcoming weeks!

'what's up' weekly.

Well.  Radio silence yet again.  How do you people even put up with me anymore?

via GIPHY


I'm going to deflect yet again, and claim I have an excuse... namely The Headache That Simply Refuses to Kill Me Already.  Oh my good gravy.  Today is Day 21, and it's still going strong.  I will say, it is gradually letting up, with longer stretches of dull aching between full-on migraines.  And while the massage I got last week to hopefully help did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AND I WAS SO MAD ABOUT IT, my chiropractor adjustment yesterday did seem to make some headway.  (Harhar. Also, though, with chiro care, the pain always seems to get worse before it gets better.  Ouch.)

Todd has been given instructions by my chiropractor to give me daily neck massages until my follow-up adjustment next week, which would normally be cause for a happy dance on my part, but A) I'm in too much pain to enjoy a massage, and B) I'm in too much pain to dance anyway.

Guys, if ever I 'coveted' a prayer, as they say, it's this moment.  In fact, I covet all your prayers.  Every single one of them, and I'm being literal.  I'm going to get resentful if I hear you were sending up prayers for anything other than my headache.  There is no time to pray for 'traveling mercies,' or 'hedges of protection,' or anything along the lines of, "Lord, we just ask, Lord, that you would just, Lord, be with Susan, Jesus, who just could use just some peace, Lord..."  No. Nien. Nyet.  I truly covet every single last prayer you've got in you.


Annnnnyway.  Enough belly-aching.  (Head-aching?)  There was some good stuff that happened this week, too.  I guess.  If I'm having to 'look on the bright side,' and all that garbage.

Todd preached this week.  (Twice, actually - at Salt on Thursday, and then again at church on Sunday.)  These are always my favorite weeks.

Listen to his Salt sermon from 1 Corinthians, on Christian marriage, here:

Listen to his Sunday sermon from James, on fighting and quarreling, here. 

On Monday, we made an impromptu trip up to Iowa for the day, because we're nothing if not jetsetters.  We left in the morning, drove through some (weird. random.) snow and ice, and got waylaid in the parking lot of a verrrrrrry rural Dollar General by a truly epic blow-out incident of Callista's doing.  Because we were only planning to spend the day at my mom's house, where there would be diapers and wipes on hand, I didn't pack those things.  I didn't pack Callista a change of clothes.  I didn't pack her a standby pacifier, since I had no idea the one she had on her would get poop on it.

So, I stripped her down and tried cleaning her up in the van while Todd ran inside the Dollar General to buy her clothes, diapers, wipes, and towels.  (Her carseat was covered in poop, so we needed something to cover it with before putting her back in.)  It. Was. Incredible.  I often make the silly assumption that, because we've had so many toddlers already, nothing new can happen.  Nothing will ever faze me again.  And then God chuckles in my direction, and something starts stirring deep in Callista's bowels, and I'm humbled, yet again.

We did make it through, though unfortunately I have no photo evidence that it ever occurred.  Bummer for you guys.

I DO have some other photo evidence for you from Monday, though.  Namely that the world has THE MOST PERFECT non-Van Voorst baby that has ever been born.  I'm serious about that - she's just beautiful.  Welcome to the world, sweet niece!

Well, I think it's obvious that anything else I have to say is just basically a letdown after announcing the biggest news of the week in the middle of a blog post.  But bear with me; a few other things did happen that I feel the need to report on.

The rest of the week was spent CHRISTMAS SHOPPPPPPPING!!!!!!!!!!  I am bound and determined to have all our shopping done by Thanksgiving, so that I can head into Advent with a clear head and an attitude of rest.  Quiet.  Waiting.  We won't be traveling, I won't be shopping, I may not even be on social media (though I will still blog - as much as I currently do, anyway, which is barely at all anymore).  We will be taking a slow Advent, and I just cannot wait.  In the meantime, I've been busy getting our gifts together - and not just gifts from us for the kids, but gifts from the kids to each other.  As usual, they've wanted to spend their allowance money on presents for each other, and I could just melt.

Schooling my daughter in the joys and sorrows of online shopping.

Rocco looked like a male model (though, without his abs showing, which seems to be a major modeling no-no anymore) for his three-year photos.

Callista obviously thought she was hot stuff.

We got snow, which I'm strangely excited about and inspired by!  (Though I did take a pretty major spill on the ice the other day, so that was less-than-exciting-and-inspiring.)

Penelope picked up some ambitious reading material, and has actually made it through the first chapter, though I'm not totally sure exactly what she thinks it's saying...

(Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton)

Penelope and I went grocery shopping together, which was so fun.  We talked about how sausage is made (literally), and how animals breed (so, figuratively also), and what books we're excited for the other of us to read.  We got her some new boots, which she insisted on wearing in the van even though they were still tied together.  She's such good company.

And I got myself and all the boys in for eye doctor appointments yesterday, which was a major feat.  Now to just get the girls in at some point, and we'll be done with that for the year.  On the way home, I ran through the Starbucks drive-through to hopefully curb a bit of my throbbing headache, and the gal in front of me paid for my order!  It was such a sweet gesture after a long day of appointments, schoolwork, and physical pain.

And that is how I capped off my week - it was a full, intense, good week.

what's up weekly.

This week was pretty low-key.  We took a break from school, since we've been going for about twelve weeks now and the kids were ready for a bit of a breather.  I'd been putting off doing a break week, since our normal weeks have been a bit spotty through the first trimester of this pregnancy, so we haven't exactly completed twelve weeks of schoolwork.  But they'd been diligently doing all their independent work (read: anything that didn't require any help from me, other than pushing 'play' on the math instruction video), and they had earned a bit of time off.  So time off we took.

On the one hand, it was great.  We got a lot of extras accomplished throughout the week that had been on the backburner - I actually made it to a midwife appointment (I hadn't been seen since eight weeks, and I'm now seventeen... whoops), I took all the kids to the chiropractor, we took a trip to the library, and we stopped at the Dollar Tree to fill our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes.  Last night, I even went and got a massage to hopefully take care of the last lingering remnants of the Two-Week-Long Migraine.

In addition, because I've been feeling a bit better, I got some projects done around the house: I started switching out the kids' seasonal clothes, I sorted through their shoes (kill me), I cleaned the laundry room, I got caught up on laundry, I cleaned our bedroom and got winter bedding on the bed, I graded and filed all the kids' schoolwork, and I even took a big load of stuff to Goodwill.  I am woman, watch me clean stuff.

On the other hand, break weeks are often difficult around here.  After the first few days, the lack of structure and routine results in lots of bickering and squabbles amongst the kids.  Add to that the fact that a few of them are in 'spurt' mode, so they're extra hungry, extra tired, and seemingly extra hormonal.  AND add to that the change in weather (it snowed last night!), and it has been pure chaos around here.

So, lots of Grumble Jobs have been assigned.  In fact, play time yesterday afternoon was just scrapped in the name of doing chores, chores, and more chores.  Why?  Great question; thanks for asking.  First, a kid that spends their time indulging bad attitudes like laziness, grumbling, bickering and sassiness is often in need of extra responsibilities.  To use a metaphor Todd is fond of, a pickup truck drives straighter with a load in the back.  Secondly, if they're wasting their play time with fighting, they may as well waste it with work.  If they're not playing anyway, they may as well be productive.  And third of all, they're distracted from fighting with each other when they're all given separate jobs and a common enemy (namely, you the parent).  It's a win-win-mostlywin.

All that to say, my house is currently about as sparkling as it is ever likely to get.  My floors were mopped, bathrooms scrubbed, laundry folded and put away, basement vacuumed, garage picked up.  Maybe I should encourage the kids to start fighting more often so we can maintain such a high baseline level of clean...

Speaking of things that need to be cleaned, I give you a partial photo of what's going on in my pantry right now.

I rely much too heavily on this cheap-o door organizer, hung on this even cheaper-o hollow core door.  Because there was nothing solid in the door to screw the organizer into, the mounting system was being helped by duct tape.  Classy stuff.  Then, the metal attacher-clip-things holding the bottom section to the rest of the unit cracked, causing this mayhem.  Now, all of these pantry items, which no longer fit in the pantry, are in a plastic tub on my already-cramped kitchen counter, awaiting a miraculous permanent solution.

My pantry is a serious bane.  The opening is very narrow, and exacerbated by the fact that I have homeschool files hung on one side, and a door organizer hanging on the other side, making the actual access opening to the pantry about 12 inches wide.  On top of it, the pantry itself is a huge disaster, housing everything from small appliances, to our recycling, to cleaning supplies, to Tupperware, to snacks, to overflow from my small cupboards.  I am really needing to get the laundry room cleaned out so I can put some overflow shelving down there to house some of this stuff.  But in order to clean out the laundry room, I must first move what's down there to the garage, which means I must first clean out the garage... the storage situation in this house will be the ultimate test of my domestic capabilities.  Can I figure out a workable long-term solution, or will I kill myself from the hopelessness and futility of trying?  It's all very unclear at this point.

ALSO.  BIG NEWS.  This little booger turned three.  I'll post more about him and his party next week, but let me just say he is SO adorable and SO infuriating and already SO three.

Lolo seems to like him.  The feeling is universal.

avoiding the Plague like it's, well... the Plague.

We used to be healthy.

When we lived in Iowa, flu season would roll around and we'd be all, "Oh, pshaw.  Oh, shrug, shrug.  Oh, whatever."  We'd get the occasional cold, but the barfs were very rare for us, hitting us only once every few years.

The last couple of winters, though... man.  I don't know if it's the climate down here, or if our house is some kind of disease-ridden hotbed, or if our new Missouri friends are secretly and slowly trying to poison us, but, dang.  We have been hit hard and often, with our stomach bug cycles seeming to just repeat over and over and over from February until June.  Multiply the barfs by eight people across four months, and it is truly apocalyptic.  I'm genuinely surprised I'm still alive to tell the tale.

But this year, you guys.  This year is going to be different.  It has to be different.  I just can't do it anymore.  So I'm girding my loins, stocking my arsenal and setting my face to rout the enemy.  I will not be mocked; I will not be conquered; I will not be weak.

I'm busting out the big guns: a daily concoction of elderberry syrup and grape juice.

 I keep a silly-looking Dixie cup dispenser on hand in the kitchen for this daily purpose; the flip-top mason jar lid has made it MUCH more likely that I'll stay regular with this, since it requires so little effort or clean-up to bartend this cocktail.

Why elderberry syrup?  Because this stuff is a Christmas-flavored Immune System in a Jar.  I get kits from my friend Paige (YES! I KNOW!) at Elder N Honey Co. and make it with honey I buy locally.  (Eh.  "Local" is relative; I buy mine by the gallon through a friend in Iowa, so it's not exactly in my backyard, and figuring out how to get it from her place to mine involves a series of complicated hand-offs compiled to form what we've dubbed "Operation Honey Wagon.")  If you can boil pasta, you are a more advanced chef than is required for making your own elderberry syrup with one of these kits.

I ordered two kits this year, which is enough to make about six pints, but we're already through two pints so far, so I may need to order a couple more when they come back in stock.  (These seriously fly off the shelves; they're that good.)

The results of one kit.

Also - why do I add grape juice?  I'm both proud and ashamed to admit that it's mostly because of an unquestioning belief in everything I read on the internet.  I saw a random Facebook post about the stomach flu being unable to survive in a stomach regularly doused in grape juice.  Why?  Who knows.  There is no supporting science that I'm aware of.  HOWEVER.  I figure it can't hurt, and I'm a desperate woman.  So, grape juice shots for everybody!!!! (Except Laurelai, who is the only preschooler in the history of the world who doesn't like juice of any kind, so she takes her elderberry syrup straight and neat.)

I will soon be adding these Vitamin D drops and some sodium ascorbate to the cocktail to add to the immune boosting powers, but for now, this is at least a good start.

For Callista, who is old enough to take remedies with honey, but is also still young enough that I'm solely responsible for her care and therefore constantly looking for shortcuts, I use these Vitamin C drops, also from Elder N Honey Co.  They come with their own little dropper, so I don't have to deal with using my own medicine syringe, which is just more work than it's worth somehow.  I ordered 6 oz. to cover us for the upcoming season.

In addition, I also have been brewing my own fire cider - a truly terrifying infusion of apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, horseradish, turmeric, garlic, jalapenos, etc. etc. etc.  It sits for a month, at the end of which time I am supposed to strain out all the solids and refrigerate the infused liquid.  At the onset of any nasties, any of the Potentially Infirm are instructed to mix a shot of this fire cider with some honey, and cross their fingers that they don't poison themselves.  It all sounds very thrilling, and promisingly effective.  My half-gallon batch was ready to strain on Halloween... but I've been too chicken (ahem, I mean, too early pregnant and too concussed... and also too chicken) to approach it.  But I will pep-talk myself into it one day soon.

After sitting for a month, the ingredients seem to have leached most of their color - and presumably, their essence - into the liquid.  Which I am very afraid but resolved to drink.

I am also about to embark upon a journey of fermenting garlic cloves in raw honey, which I'm actually quite excited about, and seems simple enough.  (Peel garlic; cover in honey; leave in breathable jar for a month, turning occasionally; beat All the Germs; call yourself a home remedy wizard; win awards.)  

And that, friends, is what my kitchen is currently churning out in preparation for creating an anti-Plague bubble around the Van Voorst family this winter.  What other tips do you have for me?


*Yes, yes.  I realize this post was a total plug for Elder N Honey Co.  I'm not being compensated by them or anything; I just love this company that much.  The Amazon links, on the other hand, are purely affiliate links.  Cha-ching, suckers. JK JK I am always grateful for the small amount of commission that comes my way when you order - at no extra cost -through the links I post!)

ConcussionPlus!

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have already seen that I've had some stuff going on in life.

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It turns out the "pregnancy migraine" I've had all week has actually been due to a mild concussion I sustained hitting my head on the kitchen cabinet like a real moron. Keeping things flossy.

A post shared by Paige Van Voorst (@theminivanvoorsts) on Nov 2, 2018 at 3:15pm PDT

Long story short, I hit my head the weekend before Halloween.  Hit it hard.  I was unloading the dishwasher and bent down to grab a plate, while Penelope opened the cupboard door above me (unbeknownst to me).  I stood up directly into the corner edge of the cupboard door and, well, it wasn't pretty.

All through last week, I had a headache that I just couldn't shake.  I tried everythannnng and nothing worked.  By Friday, after being seen by a chiropractor and still seeing no improvement, the nurse at my midwife's office advised me to head to the ER.

So I did.  Which is where I posted this photo, after the doctor speculated I was dealing with a mild concussion.  (It was all based on a lot of 'probably's, since at this point I was six days removed from the actual incident.)  They gave me fluids and some Tylenol, made me sit in an embarrassingly defunct hospital gown, and about three hours later, sent me home.

But by the time I got home, my headache was already back.  And it is still hanging around.  My midwife thinks it's just a pretty gnarly migraine, with a coincidence of hitting my head around the same time.  (Which actually sounds right to me - on thinking about it more, Todd and I are both pretty sure my headache started before I hit my head - I'm foggy on the timeline, but Todd said his first thought when he realized I'd hit my head was along the lines of, "Crap, now her headache is going to get worse."  I remember I had a headache when we went trick or treating at Shelter, which was before the Dishwasher Debacle.)

I have found that heat packs help, so I've been basically swaddled in Thermacare products since Saturday.  I have a massage scheduled for this coming Thursday, and I'm hoping that helps as well.  Otherwise, I'm just kind of... waiting it out.

ALL OF THAT TO SAY: maybe it's a concussion, maybe it's just a migraine, but whatever the case, screens really hurt my eyes right now, and I'm finding it difficult to not only mentally focus long enough to blog, but also to physically focus my eyes in order to blog.  I may or may not be spotty around here for the next few days.

So far, this pregnancy has made me such a fickle, fair-weather friend!  Sorry for the sporadicity.

'what's up' weekly.

This week has been defined by two, and only two things: Trick Or Treating, and The Pregnancy Headache From HELLLLLLL.

I'll just get the bad news out of the way first, so we can end on a good note, which means you'll need to give me a second to gripe.  I have had the same lingering headache since Monday: sometimes it recedes to a dull ache, other times it ramps itself up to migraine proportions, but never, ever is it gone.  I have tried EVERYTHING: essential oils, magnesium lotion, Epsom salt baths, drinking tons of water, laying on the Miracle Balls (which are hilariously named and the source of unending jokes, and also *usually* effective but completely useless at the moment), ice, heat, a chiropractic adjustment - even Tylenol didn't even touch it.  The most effective thing I've found has been wearing our amber teething necklace around the house... which is ridiculous, because it's baby sized, and even though my neck is barely even a neck and is more like a skewer for my head, it was a tight fit.  BUT.  It worked a little, which is more than I can say for any other method I tried.

I am getting so sick of it.  I can't look at anything without making it worse.  I can't close my eyes without making it worse.  I can't sleep through it.  It has gotten so bad at times as to cause my (still lingering) nausea to flare up.  I would cut off my head to stop the pain (which wouldn't be all that difficult, as we've already established that my neck is only marginally working as it is), but then I'd lose my best feature - my eyes.  (I'd also lose my worst feature - my skin - so maybe I should just go for it.)

Ugh.  Okay, so moving on to a cheerier subject: Van Voorst Children in Halloween Costumes!!

We got the privilege of taking the kids out twice this year, since Todd's office hosted a trick-or-treat event on the grounds last Saturday.

Atticus was a fisherman, Penelope a bumblebee, Finneas a soldier; Laurelai was Little Red Riding Hood (whose nickname, apparently, is Red Ruby Ribbons, as she insisted on informing every single person she came in contact with), Rocco was Mr. Peanut, and Callista went as a pumpkin (a leftover costume from the year we dressed the kids as Pumpkin Pi.)

Later in the week, we took the kids around the block on Halloween night.  They were so adorable - and Callista's remix of Penelope's lamb costume was a huge hit.  She was so adorable - and though she wasn't convinced right at first, she eventually came around.

The kids raked in SO MUCH CANDY, and now I'm about to blow up to Beauregard-sized proportions if I don't get this stuff out of my line of sight very soon.

And in other, random-so-let's-tack-it-on-the-end news, I hung out with a mom of nine kids on Monday.  It was like hanging out with a celebrity - I still feel star-struck when I can say I know moms with more kids than I have.  I'm still like, "But how do you do it?  How do you manage it all?"  I wonder if that feeling ever goes away, or if at a certain point you simply max out and can't find any moms of larger families than yours - but if you did, it would still make you feel like a total noob by comparison?  Guess I'll have to keep on testing the theory.

Anyway.  Off to go lay on an ice pack and pray for a stronger option for headache relief to magically fall from the sky - like an anvil.  A well-aimed anvil would be really good right about now.  (Can you hear me, God?  It's me.  Paige Van Voorst.  AN-VIL.)