what's up weekly.

Hi friends! 

Last weekend, we headed up to Iowa to celebrate Rocco's 6th birthday with a Spiderman party with family.  The weather was beautiful, so we got to spend lots of time outside in the evening before heading inside for cake and presents.

Biggest girl cousin and littlest girl cousin!

The next day, my sister's oldest daughter had a party to celebrate her own upcoming birthday, so we got to party it up again!  Having cousins makes everything twice as fun!

Juni had some potty accidents over the weekend, which was really discouraging.  I told Todd that I was going to give it one more week, and if it still hadn't 'clicked,' we were going to just quit and wait a good long while until things settled in after the baby.  (Ironically, he had told me a few weeks ago that I should consider this, and I had a meltdown at the mere suggestion.  Just to give belated credit for wisdom where it's due.)  On the drive home, Juni started crying out that she had peed, but we weren't anywhere near a gas station, and it was dark, so we had to drive for close to an hour before we could stop.  We got out, I changed her clothes and put her in a diaper, and put her back in the carseat.  But before we could drive away, she kept asking to go potty, so I took her inside and she immediately went when I sat her down.  She had held it for an HOUR.  And we haven't had a single accident since then.  It finally seems to have clicked!  GOOD JOB, JUNI!  Got the last one out of diapers just in time for the next one!

On Monday, we jumped back into a half-day of school.  Everyone was exhausted from the long drive, missed naps, and Daylight Savings weirdness, so we did morning school but were done by lunch time.  I took some time in the afternoon to run to Aldi and Hobby Lobby to continue to pare down the lists for prepping for the baby, getting Atticus' birthday present, preparing for holiday meals in advance, and having all our Christmas gifts on hand.  It turns out this is a major undertaking and I am still far from finished, but at least I'm inching ever closer.

Tuesday was a normal school day, and then while I had planned to use our open Wednesday to make up the time we missed on Monday afternoon, Wednesday quickly took some surprising turns.  The boys had a spur-of-the-moment speech therapy appointment, and then I met with a few friends through the afternoon.  Then Thursday was back to normal.

I am at the point in pregnancy where I swing wildly from having no energy to do anything at all, and school has lost its luster, and cooking is physically painful... to climbing on counters to Goo-Gone my upper cabinet doors... and then obviously back to having no energy.  I took on a few big projects this week: I cleaned out two of the three freezers, I cleaned my kitchen cabinets/floors/walls, I fitted out an ugly laminate storage cubby with a pretty stained-wood 'skin'.  I also spent a lot of time laying on the couch or sitting in the bathtub or laying in my bed, and heating up pre-made meals that had been intended to be used in the postpartum days.  I just don't have it in me to 'normal life' anymore.  I have to be living at one extreme or the other.

And yes, to answer your question, I DO wear this sweater all. the. time.

I can tell pregnancy hormones are in the final push of things.  I am back to being absolutely nauseated by most smells - why does everything smell so bad?  The fridge, the food, the trash can, the houseplants, the kids' breath, the laundry, EVERYTHING STINKS.  If I have to smell one more stinky smell, I am going to lose my mind.  I also hate my skin at the moment.  Not how it looks, just the fact that I have any.  It is crawling all the time.  I just want to scratch it all off.

You can guess I've been quite pleasant to be around lately.

Want to know the most recent thing to make me cry?  A slipcover.

We needed to buy one in kind of 'this is an emergency' kind of way after the last remaining intact side of the couch cushion started ripping.  (And that's not to even mention those arms!)  The couch is genuinely falling apart and I needed to cover it before it just disintegrated.  But because it has T-cushions, options are VERY limited.  I could pick between an old-lady damask white one that looked like a table cloth, or one that was 'microsuede' in the color 'concrete.'  So I picked the concrete one.

But unless concrete is PINK AND SHINY, this slipcover looked nothing like concrete.  It looked like the inside of a seashell.  Or like a couch in a Vegas motel that was decorated to look like the inside of a seashell.  The pictures don't do it justice; it was awful.  Plus, the microsuede felt absolutely disgusting - I hate that texture anyway, but right now with my skin not even being able to handle the texture of sweatpants, it was completely overwhelming.  So we'll be sending it back, and we are now on the hunt for an entirely new couch. 

If you are even remotely tempted to tell me it doesn't look that bad, then this photo is lying to you.  Take this photo, add greasy/sticky/plush/sweaty texture, increase the pink balance, and then add plenty of "bunch" that is hidden behind the pillows.  THAT is the reality that isn't adequately communicated through the screen. There is so much grip to the fabric that I couldn't even straighten the blankets out all the way.  So I gave up.  And cried.

It makes me sad.  I love this couch.  I adore this couch.  It is sturdy, it is comfortable, it's pretty, it is a great size and shape and silhouette.  It has held up well over the course of fifteen years and four moves and millions of kids jumping on it, and if you don't count the uphostery fabric itself (which has always been my least favorite characteristic of this couch anyway), it's still basically like new.  If reupholstering it didn't cost more than just replacing it, I'd have it reupholstered in a heartbeat.  But alas.  I am not optimistic I will find anything I love so much, or that will hold up so well as this guy has, but it seems to be time to move on.

I will probably cry about it again at some point, so I'm happy to say that I have some beautiful family photos to look at to help assuage my grief.  (Thank you so much to my brother-in-law for being so kind to take these for us!)

And with that, I'm off to lay around some more.