weekly what's up. (wherein Ophelia turns eleven months and the kids are all sick.)

I AM HERE ONCE AGAIN!  I think this is some kind of attendance record, as long as we're not counting those years that I blogged every weekday, or the years where I at least blogged every single Friday.  But if we're not counting those, I'm on a regular TEAR.

This week has been a strange one.  Last Friday morning, Atticus woke up feeling terrible, with a deep cough and a fever.  We did as much school as we could manage (luckily Fridays are much lighter days, and mostly consist of couch time while we read).  

In the evening, Todd took the other kids to the monthly Psalm Sing with our church family, and Atticus (and Ophelia) and I stayed home.  It was actually really nice getting some one-on-one time with him; by the evening he was feeling a bit better, so I made us some dinner and we sat and chatted.  Afterward, we popped some popcorn and watched Victorian Farm.  (I promise he picked it! I even offered to watch a World War II documentary with him, but he picked Victorian Farm.  I couldn't believe it.)

The next day it seemed everyone was on the mend, and the kids played outside for a bit.  The temperature has dropped significantly over the last week, and we got to fire up the new fireplace.  We are in love.

Sunday, Penelope woke up under the weather, so I stayed home from church with her.  I got the closet in the book room cleaned out and unpacked and she watched Kung Fu Panda.  By the evening, she had spiked a fever and developed a deep cough.

Monday, it was Finneas' turn to fall ill.  Tuesday it was Rocco's turn.  (Rocco even mixed things up by barfing in his bed.)  Finneas has been feverish all week, has lost his voice, has burst blood vessels in his eyes from coughing.  Rocco threw up again on Wednesday, but this time he at least made it to the bathtub (another kid was using the toilet at the time).  It has been rough, and has now lasted a full week and the body-wracking coughing is still going strong... and the four little girls haven't even gotten it yet.  I would like to believe they won't catch it, but I have a feeling we won't be that lucky.

We did actually make it through most of our schoolwork this week, even with all of that considered.  And we are on break all week next week, so hopefully we will have plenty of time to rest and recover.  (Or, they will; I have tons of stuff I'm hoping to get done, including some painting, finishing the chicken coop, and running some errands I just never have time for during school weeks.  Plus obviously Thanksgiving prep and travel, which is the whole reason we're off next week.  So we'll see how much I can actually get done in the three days before Thanksgiving.)

Our week has held a few extras as well:

Our first real snow of the season.  It feels so early.  But it has helped me get in the spirit for Christmas planning, which is helpful since we started ordering gifts this week.  (I try to get all my shopping done before December so we can just enjoy our Advent season without any sense of panic.)

I am getting close to getting done with the chicken run.  I am so ready to be done with it - I only have short windows of time in which to work between school and dinner prep and nursing; plus, I have no idea what I'm doing so it's kind of a janky go of it.  It's been a whole thing.  But I have the whole frame built; I just need to build a couple of doors and finish up installing the chicken wire.  It's about time - the chickens have been living inside the coop for the last month, and while they're doing okay with it, it just isn't kind or stewardly to keep them stuck inside in the dark like that all day.  We sometimes let them out in the yard to run around, but they poop on everything, dig up the sod, and constantly attempt escape.  Here's a glamour shot of them pooping on the deck stairs.  They're lucky they're so cute.  (Except Howitzer, our lone black chicken.  She is decidedly not cute, but she is the smartest and funniest of all of them, which is usually how it goes with uggos.)

Ophelia turned eleven months old.  OPHELIA TURNED ELEVEN MONTHS OLD.  In a burst of perfect timing, she learned how to do "SOOOO BIIIIG!" this week.

Look at her tiny T-Rex arms - I DIE.

She is our Oh-ee.  Her head is an "O," and her eyes are two "O"s and she is just Oh So Perfect.  She still has "only" eight tiny chompers, and she has a pit bull bite.  She is starting to crawl more often instead of just swimming everywhere.  (I call her The Catfish, because she swims around bottom-feeding for dropped food under the table.)  She is in 9 month clothing and I finally weighed her for the first time since birth - 17.4 lbs!  She is one of our heaviest girls at this age.  She is growing well and eating well - she often eats breakfast and dinner with us, and she still wakes up once a night around 3:30 or 4:00 to eat.

She's so big!

Like, "Godzilla"-Big.

This is her fake-mad face and it KILLS ME.  I want her to be mad more often just so I can see this face.

With her getting so close to a year, conversations have come up multiple times this week recalling how sick I was at this time last year.  It has been on my mind all week - it's hard to explain.  I was weeks away from my due date, and caught Covid, and genuinely got the closest to death I've ever been.  There were moments we really did fear for my life, which is just such a weird thing to say.  Things could have really gone so differently, and it's strange to look back on it from this side of things.  The fact that both Ophelia and I are here and fine is something I don't take for granted.  This Thanksgiving, I have plenty to be thankful for, including the Godsend of a Christian doctor who treated me, and the husband who took care of me and the kids and everything else, and the healthy beautiful baby I get to snuggle all day.

Anyway, sorry to leave you on a more introspective note than usual.  I think there is just so much happening at this time of year - Thanksgiving, Ophelia's first birthday, Christmas planning - that it's hard not to associate those things with the huge struggle that happened alongside them last year.  It feels like a weird milestone or something.  

Tiny Christmas Oh-ee!

I think this therefore officially marks the kick-off of the holiday season, and I'm so happy to have so much to be grateful for and to celebrate!

what's up weekly. (Rocco is seven, as well as some less important stuff.)

Well, hey there party people.  I bet you're shocked to find me around these parts two weeks in a row.  Someone needs to give me a medal.  Or better yet, cut me one of those giant checks.  I could use a giant check right about now.

Our first important item of note is that Little Brother is getting less little.  It could even be argued that he is not even a little bit little anymore, although I defy anyone to bring that argument to the floor.  I am still in denial.

For his birthday meals he requested Lucky Charms for breakfast, hot dogs and macaroni for lunch, and homemade pizza for dinner.  The kid knows how to carbo load.

He is sweetness itself.  He is unruffleable and good natured.  He literally never gets mad.  Ever.  He has a funny sense of humor and is definitely a seven-year-old boy.  (He made a super weird boy-face, asked Todd to take a picture of it, and then said, "Hmm.  That's the first time I've ever made that face as a seven-year-old.)  He has a weirdly extensive vocabulary, is so incredibly smart, and LOVES school.  After reading a chapter in Little House in the Big Woods, he said, "Well, that was quite the treat."  He still falls asleep during Story Club most nights, and he snores.  He has basically zero sense of personal space, and loves to be snuggled up to anyone who will let him.  He and Finneas appear to be attached at the hip, and are so good at being brothers.  They love playing GI Joes, riding bikes, running around in the field behind our house, having pretend shoot-outs, and wrestling.  Finneas is also a snuggler, so it's like they were MFEO.  

We love our soft, tough, brave, gentle, goofy, quiet, smart, good-natured brother so much, and are grateful for seven whole years with him so far.

To celebrate his birthday, we made a trip up to Iowa over the weekend so we could see family and wear eye patches.

Grilled cheese and Spaghetti-Arrrrrrrrs.

He asked for a donut cake and my mom delivered.

Later in the week it was Election Day.  We took all the kids with us to vote.  I'm glad they had the experience.

The rest of the week was spent doing school and working in small chunks on projects around the house, like continuing to work on the chicken run and cleaning up the back yard.  Our school schedule is still manageable; the rest of life feels a little hard to juggle right now though.  There is never enough time to work with.  But at least school is going well!  Maybe at some point I can cover what this school year is looking like for us.

We have switched to Teaching Textbooks for math and are liking it so far.

This book isn't for school; he's reading it in his free time.  Color me impressed.

And other than that, the weather has been off-and-on nice all week (up to the seventies, down to the thirties, you know how it is) so the kids have been taking advantage of whatever time they can outside.

See?  MFEO.

And that was our week!

what's up weekly. (in which our chickens come home to roost. also, halloween.)

I'm not even going to start this post off with an apology for my delinquency.  In fact, at this point, if you fully anticipated that I would be punctual and present, I kind of judge you for holding onto illogical expectations in the face of stark reality.  But then I also admire you for your willingness to believe the best about me, so I feel conflicted.  

These last two weeks have been full of the same tornado energy as the last couple of months have been.  I think that's just life right now, though I am hoping it settles down soon.

Two weeks ago, our friends Andrew and Jen brought our chickens and our coop to us.  They'd been chicken-sitting until we were able to get settled.  It was so wonderful to get to see them and their kiddos, and our kids were also so very happy to have the chickens settled in.  We're getting our own eggs now!  Unfortunately, the very simple "run" we were hoping to set up for them wasn't adequate (we kept watching them just fly right over the fencing, even with their wings clipped), so they've been having to live inside the coop while a different solution is built, which is slow-going because, again, Life is Crazy.  But more on that in a bit.

These chickens rode in this down the interstate.  It must have been thrilling.

Penelope was thrilled to be reunited.

Andrew's trailer tips up (their son Tobias is there on the side, pushing the button to tip it!), so it was so smooth getting it off the truck.

Some of our friends from Leavenworth came to help get it into place.

I find it hilarious that it almost perfectly matches our house.

The twenty-fourth was Todd's birthday!  He is forty-four years young, with a gaggle of kids to show for his time here on earth, and eternity will never be the same.  We are so grateful for his hard work and diligence at keeping life FUN.  Our home is a much more joyful, festive place because of him, and Scripture saturates every part of life.  I pray earnestly that our kids will be indelibly shaped by his example and his investment, and that they come into adulthood being like him.  I'm so glad he was born.

We took a farm tour with the family who now provides us with milk and eggs.  It's no Amish community (which I still miss so much it physically hurts) but it was fun to see the whole operation from where our food comes!  They not only have the couple of Jersey cows that they milk, but they also raise dairy and meat goats, angus cattle, guineas and Australian Shepherds, as well as hundreds of acres of crops.  Also, nine kids.  It's a bustling place.

Okay, back to the chicken run debacle.  Long story short, I am trying to build an enclosure.  I am not skilled in the lumber arts, and it is going slowly and crookedly.  The neighbor saw it and took pity on me and has volunteered to help me build it.  In the meantime, I have these yokels to help me move forward on it.

In other news, Ophelia got a bath, which is always an item of note and cause for busting out the camera.

Last Saturday, our church threw a Reformation Day party, with food and bouncy castles and games and square dancing and a costume contest.  It was SO MUCH FUN.  The kids got all dressed up.

Please look at how tall Atticus is and then lament with me how quickly time flies.

This is the face of pure joy.

Trying to munch an empty box of Nerds.

Gotta love group dances.

Learning the Virginia Reel.

Friends came from Columbia to stay with us that weekend as well, so we had an extra full Sabbath dinner.  Then Todd and our friend Josh went out with some of the guys from church (Jared Longshore was in town to preach at our church, so they all went out to hang out with him and get to know him better), and Megan and I stayed home and got the kids in bed.  Then we got some quiet time to actually catch up!  I am really loving how many people we can fit in this house.

Monday was Halloween AND Reformation Day, so we really got to go all out.  The kids dressed up in their costumes and we walked our small neighborhood.  I LOVE OUR NEIGHBORHOOD.  If I haven't been clear about that before.  

I couldn't decide between the lamb and the mouse this year, so I refused to choose just one.

Todd said, "It makes sense she was a mouse, because that is a cheesy grin." 

When we got home, we had our first cheeseboard of the holiday season (while still wearing our costumes), and then we watched Luther... while eating candy and wearing costumes.  It was so festive and fun.

I'm going to take a pause right here for anyone wondering our thoughts on Halloween.  I can go into it more sometime, but this fun video sums up our thoughts...

 

On Wednesday, the kids had some friends over for the evening, so it turned into a night of dinner and folk dancing/ballroom dancing.  They had a blast - Penelope leaned over and said, "There was a moment tonight that I wished it would never end!"  The kids are really feeling at home and settled here and have made such great friends already.  It is so wonderful to watch them blossom.

When the whole table is the kids' table.

The rest of the week has flown by, trying to keep up with school (which is proving increasingly challenging as the weeks march on), and trying to hold back the ever-lurking threat of childhood illness that starts to percolate this time of year.  (Juni had a dry throat the night we went Trick or Treating, and she kept coughing over and over, and Todd said she decided to go as Covid.  That's the scariest costume.)  We've had a couple random fevers pop up this week, and lots of runny noses.  'Tis the season - shorter days, cooler weather, and plenty of refined sugar to stoke the fires of disease.

Ahh, well, what can you do?  One thing I like to do to cheer me up and keep me going is to watch Ophelia do anything at all.  Look!  Here she is, staring out the window.  (One thing I LOVE about this house is that the windows are lower to the ground, so the tiny people can actually see outside.)

Well, friends, that's it for now.  Until we meet again!