what's up weekly.

Hi, hi!  I am exhausted this week, so I'm going to try to keep this pretty short and sweet.  This pregnancy is really taking it out of me - even though I'm only 21 weeks, and still in the second trimester, I am really tired and really big, and I find myself needing tons of sleep.  My goal this week was to nap each day, but it didn't even happen once because we had stuff going on every morning, and I just didn't get time.  So here's a rundown of what we were filling our time with:

Over the weekend, we made an impromptu trip to Boonville.  We spent so much time there last summer during the mask mandate, but we hadn't been back yet this summer.  We picked up pizza from Casey's and let the kids run wild on the playground.

The girls quickly made friends with some other girls who were there, and they spent much of the evening running around playing Huggie Monster.

Penelope also spent time on Saturday taking everything out of the van and vacuuming it out, because it bothered her how much dirt had accumulated all over the floor and in the car seats.  If I haven't said it recently, I'll say it now: I love having big kids.  (I also love that I get to have big kids without giving up having little kids.  I get the best of all worlds!) 

On Sunday, the sisters were looking especially adorable (or, in the case of Penelope, SO OLD.  Vacuuming the van really aged her.)

THEN!!!  I had my ultrasound appointment on Monday!  

Todd and I dropped the kids off at a friend's house so we could go together, and when we came back to pick everyone up, Callista started crying because she had been under the impression that we were going to the hospital to get the baby out and bring it home.  Poor, poor girl - she is so excited for the baby, but the waiting game is HARD for little ones.  They have no concept of time, so saying things like, "The baby will come when the weather is cold and the Christmas tree is in the house" is helpful, but not exactly a reassurance in mid-June when she's already been waiting for the new baby for six whole weeks.

So, here's what we know from our ultrasound: no doomsday prophecies were spoken (unlike our experience with Juni), so that was a huge sigh of relief; I am measuring right at my due date, which is actually a week or two larger than I normally am at this point; and we are having a GIRL!

We waited until later in the day to tell the kids the baby's gender, so I decorated a little bit as a surprise, and we ate ice cream bars to celebrate.

Between my growth rate, and the fact that all of my girls have come before the 20-week ultrasound due date, I suspect we'll be having this baby a little on the early side rather than the late side.  If that's the case, that would be a huge relief: my due date is December 19, and it has been kind of stressing me out to assume we'll be going past that date and cutting it so close to Christmas.

So anyway.  That was our biggest news of the week.

In the afternoon on Monday, I picked up an Azure Standard order, which was the first time in forever.  It felt good and I'm considering starting to order more of our groceries through there; at least the ones that are comparably priced to what I currently pay locally - the 8% shipping fee is actually lower than our 10% local sales tax, so that's a small savings, plus it's a Christian-owned company and I have wanted to start spending our money a bit more intentionally.

On Tuesday, Todd took Atticus to Kansas City for his first orthotropics appointment since Covid started.  Atticus was thrilled to get to spend that one-on-one road trip time together again.  I was hoping they would be able to stop at Ikea for me on the way home, but the shelves I was hoping to get before school starts up again were out of stock.  Huge bummer.

While they were gone, Finneas smacked himself in the head while whipping a toy around, and wanted me to take a picture of the blood before I cleaned it up so he could impress Atticus.  Boys, am I right?

On Wednesday and Thursday mornings, I took the kids to a friend's pool to swim.  (The first day, I took the big three girls, the second day I took the boys, and both days Juni stayed behind with the homebound so she wouldn't drown.)

In addition to all of that, I've been working on cleaning out the laundry room and the boys' closet this week, as well as sorting outgrown clothes in anticipation of the upcoming seasonal swap-out.  The basement is still in the "worse before it gets better" project stage as a result, but I think there's light at the end of the tunnel. 

Today I'll be running errands and hopefully taking a nap, although I still have some work to do in the basement that is best done during naptime, so we'll see if that happens.

The kids have spent inordinate amounts of time playing in the garage with the Duplos this week; we don't always have them out and available, so when they do come out, they're pretty novel.

And that was our week.  Maybe not as short and sweet as I thought I could make it, but that just goes to show how good and full we really have it around here.