Happy Birthday, Penelope!

Yesterday was Penelope's birthday!  She is NINE YEARS OLD.  Oh my goodness.

This girl is just full-throttle sweetness and spunk and sincerity.  She is so smart, and her vocabulary rivals mine.  She is an avid reader, and an incredible writer, and will readily tell you that she is a good writer because she's a committed reader.  (It's amazing how few writers, and also educators, seem to understand what she has already intuited.)  She uses her giftings to bless others - she often writes stories, books, and poems for the rest of us, and is such a great encourager with her words.  She has a natural talent for writing plays and songs, and loves performing.

She is helpful and servant hearted.  She loves making breakfast for her siblings.  She has requested to learn to change diapers so she can help me with Juniper.  She keeps her own room so clean and tidy, and even likes to rearrange her shelves to make them pretty and fresh.  She readily takes responsibility for the younger kids without being asked - buckling them into car seats, putting on their shoes or coats, brushing their teeth, or playing with them when they need to be out from underfoot.  She has taken personal responsibility for our pet turtle, Stumpi, feeding her every day and cleaning out her cage- all without being asked or reminded.  She sees needs and really enjoys meeting them.

She is so funny.  She is kind.  She is patient.  She really strives to honor Todd and me.  She's a gift-giver, and revels in spending her allowance on the perfect gift for someone else.  Often, the lucky recipient is yours truly, and gifts from her are honestly so thoughtful and meaningful.

When she grows up, she wants to have ten kids and run a self-sufficient farm.  She loves horses and gardening and babies.  I just know she is going to do great things in life and for God's kingdom as she grows!

I can't tell you how much I enjoy this person.  She is a genuine blessing.  Not just as a child, but as a friend.  She fills my days with laughter and deep conversation over our many shared interests.  She is engaging and interesting and so full of life.  She continues to become more and more precious to me every single year, and I'm so grateful for the gift of her life and presence.

Happy birthday, cherished one!

juniper's birth story.

Juniper's story is so very unique, and it's hard to even know where to start!  (Read here for some of her story and the unknowns we were facing as we approached labor.)

Last Thursday night, right at 39 weeks, I had a couple really strong contractions.  They never turned into anything, and I was so far away from my due date, I didn't think much of them.  Plus, Todd was in for a full weekend of ministry (he'd be gone and teaching at a men's event Friday night and Saturday, and preaching at church on Sunday), so I think I was just needing to mentally get to a spot where we weren't facing timing/logistical complications with that.  So once the contractions died down, I didn't think too much about them.

Sometime over the weekend (I had been thinking it was Saturday morning, but Todd remembers it being Friday night) I started kind of … leaking something.  It wasn't like previous labors when my water broke, so I wasn't sure what I was dealing with.  My midwife was gone over the weekend, Todd was in and out through the weekend, and I wasn't confident I knew what was happening.  So I did what I default to in times of uncertainty: I sat around and waited until something became more obvious.

By Sunday night, I was still leaking, and so Todd and I prayed that if it was amniotic fluid, I would start labor overnight and know for sure what to do.  Around 2:00 a.m., contractions began in earnest, and by 3:30 I had asked my mom to start the drive down from Iowa.  I puttered around gathering stuff for the hospital (I still hadn't packed the hospital bag before that) and putting on makeup (because I'm nothing if not practical when I have time to kill at 4:00 a.m.).  A friend in town came over to hold down the fort while waiting for my mom to arrive, and Todd and I took off for the hospital.

My contractions weren't strong, and weren't super regular, even by the time we got to the hospital at 5:00.  At first check, I was already dilated to 4, and they confirmed I'd been leaking amniotic fluid... for two or three days, which is not great.  I was taken directly to a labor room, and given a bit of time to see if labor picked up on its own, or if they'd need to start Pitocin.

Making sure she was head down and that there was still plenty of fluid.

By 10:00, stuff still hadn't gotten moving.  I'd eaten a small breakfast, which seemed to help my overall outlook, but my contractions were still irregular (nothing from 7:15-8:30, for instance).  So they called in the anesthesiologist and got me prepped for an epidural.

Oh my word.  They were training the guy placing my epidural, and he couldn't figure it out.  He kept talking about how he was hitting bone, and how he couldn't find my ligament, and how it wasn't working, and once he placed it, his overseeing doctor-guy told him he would need to do it over again in a new spot.  It was so terrifying because, like, you know... this is my spine, Guy.  If you royally mess this up, there are no take-backsies.  It was really frightening.

Once they got the epidural going, they started Pitocin.  Pitocin has always freaked me out, but it wasn't so bad... until it was so bad.  I was fine... fine... fine... not fine.  One minute I was on the phone with my mom, wondering whether I'd be able to tell through the epidural when I'd hit transition, and literally the next minute I was being overtaken by seemingly unmitigated pain and the urge to push.  It was so strange.

I waited for a short bit while they tracked down my midwife, backed off the Pitocin, and re-dosed my epidural.  And then it was time to push.  Four pushes later, and she was out, completely and totally tangled up in her cord, but happy and healthy and HUMONGOUS.  No growth problems, no chromosomal problems, just a perfect, beautiful miracle baby.

It was a strange day.  Because I felt very normal and clear-headed for most of it, and the actual contractions/labor lasted for such a short time (though I'd technically been in labor for days at that point), it felt very much like a normal day... but one in which I had a baby.  It was completely surreal and, to be honest, a little difficult to wrap my head around.  I think I'm still processing it, even now.  In every way, it was unlike any other birth experience I've had.  She has had her own story from Day One.

We spent the rest of our stay at the hospital resting, cuddling and trying to decide on her name, which we still hadn't been able to decide on. But that's a tale for another time...

what's up weekly.

This week has held a lot of activity!  Last Friday, I enlisted (read: bribed) the kids to help me get a handle on the house.  The reasoning was two-fold: first off, the house has been a disaster.  I had emptied out my laundry room in order to make room for new shelving, but many of the things hadn't been put back or organized in any way, so my basement was full of random storage boxes and bags of things to take to Goodwill.  It was a serious bane.

But secondly, my sister and brother-in-law were coming down for the weekend, and I wanted to actually have a clean, accessible place for them to sleep.  (I know, I know.  I really go above and beyond for our houseguests.)  So the kids and I tackled the basement.

So I got my new shelves organized and filled, and my laundry room cleaned out.  It may not look fancy to you, but this is my only indoor storage space, and it is such a breath of fresh air to see it in an organized state.

Right side of laundry room, including my new media shelves.

Pantry overflow, kids' clothing storage, and bins for Goodwill/consignment.

left side of laundry room.  Guitar added for all those spontaneous jam sessions I log while waiting for the dryer to buzz.

I also (kind of) organized all the random crap strewn around our basement family room.  I think eventually I'd like to build a closet in there that is custom-sized for storage bins to give me some more tucked-away space to keep everything.  I heard once that there are two personality types when it comes to organizing: "Outties" and "Innies."  Outties like having their things organized but visible, so they know where everything is at a glance.  Innies like having their things organized but tucked away so they don't have to actually see it when they're not using it.  I am strongly, decidedly, passionately an Innie.  I would like to pretend I don't own a single functional item, and that everything in my life is there purely for aesthetics, and then I open an door and VOILA - there, waiting to surprise me, is all the stuff necessary for existence.  (Organized in an aesthetic way, of course.)  So having big plastic clothing bins to store in a house with so little hidden storage has been an obstacle for me.

As a reward for helping me clean the house, the kids got a popcorn party for lunch.  I think I made five bags of microwave popcorn...  and gave them Smarties... and let them drink Sprite.  It was all very ill advised but fun.

Lauren and Austin arrived Friday night, and we spent Saturday just enjoying their company.  Of course we didn't get any pictures with adults in them.  Sigh.  Luckily, the kids are cute, so I'm happy with the COUSIN PHOTOS!  (We hadn't seen Hyler since she was ten days old - she has grown so much!  The boys were especially smitten with her and kept asking to hold her.)

Lauren and Austin watched the kids Saturday night so we could go on a date, so we went to a local Cajun place I love.  The one drawback to this particular restaurant is that they always have live music.  Sure, it sounds like a good thing on the surface, but it's always turned up way too loudly and performed by a weirdly large troop of middle aged guys, one of whom is inevitably playing a saxophone, and all of whom are secretly still hoping to hit the big time while they sacrifice time with their wives in the name of playing their 'gigs.'  It's all very sad.  BUT this weekend there was just one guy, and he was really good, and it wasn't too loud, so I deigned to offer my approval.

The rest of the week was pretty normal - chiropractic appointment, midwife appointment, trip to the Amish.  A friend of mine came over on Tuesday and helped me to deep clean my main floor.  The walls, doors and floors have been scrubbed down, the windows have been washed, and I feel like a brand new person.  Of course, things only stayed clean for about an hour before the kids came in from playing outside, but it was a great feeling for that hour.

I feel like Callista deserves her own highlight for the week.  She has been growing like crazy: chunking out and getting 'toddler face' and 'thicky thighs,' as well as starting to talk a bit more.  She can climb up on chairs and the table (oh, great) but the beautiful thing is that she has also learned to climb down on her own, so I'm actually not all that worried about it.  She's going through that testy phase where everything sends her over the edge, but she's starting to come out the other side, which I'm grateful for.

She learned how to open a bag of trail mix by herself and without permission.  She was pretty proud of herself.

I'm curious to see how she'll do once the baby arrives.  She's still reveling in her status as the baby of the family, so I could see this transition being hard for her, but she's also becoming super maternal lately (brushing my hair, rubbing her siblings' backs when they're upset, even bringing pillows and blankets for those she thinks need a good rest) so she might like having 'her' baby here to care for.  We'll see.  We'll see very soon.

what's up weekly.

Y'all.  I'm tired.  My current size and capacity for mobility can be roughly compared to that of a recliner.  I'm telling you now, this blog post is over before it even starts.  I have nothing left in me.

We can jump off with the fact that I'm 38 weeks along, growing larger by the second, and my midwife has reassured me that the baby's head is feeling massive, as far as baby heads go.  I'm feeling trepidation about the upcoming birth and postpartum season, and very limited in my physical abilities in the meantime.  I have so many things I'd like to do around the house, including getting out the baby clothes and gear, which I still haven't done, but I'm having a really hard time getting around without pain.

I wrote out my birth plan this week, which does make me feel better.  At this point it's pretty boiled down to the few essential things that are consistently important to me during labor and recovery, and mainly seem to revolve around nice ways of saying, "Please just leave me alone."  I'm continuing to compulsively make and freeze food, though the majority of it is broth.  (Is eight gallons of chicken broth enough for one person?  Yes?  No?)  I'm getting my hospital bag gathered together, a 'baby station' set up next to my bed, and still have every intention of getting out baby clothes at some point.  Probably.

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Getting a baby station set up in my room, and gathering a few things for the hospital bag. Things are starting to get real.

A post shared by Paige Van Voorst (@theminivanvoorsts) on Apr 3, 2019 at 10:21am PDT

Hey, btw, if you're the sweet, anonymous angel who sent me those sitz bath herbs from my registry, I want to say THANK YOU!

We still haven't chosen a name yet, though I do hope we're getting close.  Naming is so hard at this point in parenthood - we want to be intentional to choose a perfect name for every baby.  Each one deserves that.  But all the names we arrived at easily have already been used, and the ones that were almost perfect, but not quite, have been vetoed.  And do we really want to give a baby a name that wasn't good enough to give an older sibling?  So then we're starting the hunt from scratch, but what names still exist out there that we haven't already heard and considered?  You see what I'm saying.  So that's why we're still deliberating.

In other, non-baby-related news, I got a truly miraculous gift the other day when I received a text from the girl whose car I hit with our big van: she's not going to be filing an insurance claim!  So our rates won't be affected, and other than jumping the obvious hurdle of figuring out how to drive this thing without hitting someone, everything seems to have ended well with that incident.

What else this week?  The kids hosted Men's and Women's Events for their little domestic church, Biblica.

The Women's Event, at which Penelope taught about why women are so special, and Laurelai played the bongos.

The Men's Event, at which Atticus preached a sermon...

...and Rocco 'led worship,' which leaned toward the hardcore.  His signature song involved screaming, "JESUS WAS A MAN, AND WE! ARE! MEN!"  Fittingly, Finneas accompanied on the bongo.

Atticus prepping for his Sunday sermon the next day.

The boys got haircuts, which they liked, but Finneas was a bit distracted by the cold snap we suffered this weekend when Todd first tried to take a picture.

This photo makes me laugh so hard I cry.  There are about twelve more on the camera card just like it.

Luckily, his face was able to make a full recovery later in the day when the sun came out.

I missed church on Sunday because of where I'm at with the pregnancy.  Mornings are really hard for me, and I'm really starting to slow down and turn inward, so I'm feeling a need to lay low.  Unfortunately, the week still held a lot of stuff, so it wasn't as restful as I'm wishing life could be right now, but I'm telling myself that every step in the right direction is a step in the right direction.

Other than that, the week held a grocery shopping outing, on which I was accompanied by Rocco.  One of our Aldi stores is closed this week, and the other one looked like the apocalypse had rolled through and had only beamed up all the groceries and left all the shoppers, so there was virtually nothing available on the shelves but the checkout lines were still weirdly long.

I had a midwife appointment, where I received good news about my own weight gain, which was welcome after a well-meaning acquaintance told me I am "really plumping out," and considering that all my maternity shirts are basically crop tops now.

Yesterday, a friend offered to watch the kids so Todd and I could get a date night in before the baby is born, so we hit up a local Mexican place, and it was wonderful.

And, that's life around here while we wait around for this baby to show herself!  Luckily we have things to occupy our time while we wait.