'what's up' weekly. (Lots of chatting about groceries and photos of our Maundy Thursday tradition.)

Hi there, folks!  Sorry to be a no-show last week.  It was a grocery shopping week, which meant I spent most of my free evening time menu planning and prepping my lists and ran out of time to blog.  

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in a while, but this school year I've been experimenting with grocery shopping every four weeks.  This school year's schedule is so full that I don't have time to dedicate more often than this.  It has mostly been working out well, but it does mean that grocery weeks are major undertakings.  Everything takes longer to plan, and then the trip to Aldi itself is quite the ordeal.  I've been getting a cart, filling it once and going through checkout, then unloading the cart, coming back inside and filling it again.

Last week, during my first trip through, my cashier asked me how many people I was shopping for, and when I told her how many kids we have, she announced over the intercom that I am pregnant with my ninth baby.  And then she made the other cashiers turn around and make sure they saw.  And then she made me wave so that everyone could see who she was talking about.  I must say, I've seen some crazy responses to our family size, but never anything like that.  It was surreal.  

Anyway.  This grocery stretch will be a little different - I need to run back to the store this morning to grab some fresh items for Easter celebrations that I didn't want to buy last week and risk them going bad before we could use them.  So I'll need to make a little minitrip this morning, but it actually works out okay with our schedule since Atticus is at work and we rearranged our school stuff already to accommodate that.  So while I normally would have science lab to teach this morning, I actually have a large open chunk of time.  Perfect!

Last week was kind of a strange one, routine-wise.  Todd spent Monday back in Columbia for a work meeting, and it was so strange to have him gone.  We've all really gotten used to just being together at home all day, so it's weird when someone's not here - especially Todd, who just seems to anchor everyone.  Then he had Thursday and Friday off, because his vacation time was piling up and he needed to use it or lose it.  Atticus was gone at work both of those days, so it made for especially strange days.

Because Todd was home on Thursday, I asked him if he'd drive me to Kansas City for an appointment with a new chiropractor.

This chiro is actually the husband of my midwife, and when I told her I've really been struggling with back pain, she suggested I go see him.  We haven't established care with anyone here yet, and he's willing (after this first appointment) to come to the house for adjustments for the rest of my pregnancy.  So I just had to get to KC for that first appointment, so it was convenient that Todd had a day he could drive me.  My adjustment went so well and really has helped with a lot of the pain I was experiencing in my mid back.  So I'm hoping it holds for a bit, because it has honestly been pretty limiting.

The next day was Friday, so like I mentioned, I went grocery shopping.  I was kicking myself later for not taking Todd with me to show him the "system" so that he can take it over for me a few times before and after the baby comes.  It is getting increasingly difficult to be on my feet that long, bending and lifting things onto the cart.  I feel like I'm some kind of chair-bound child in a Victorian children's book: crabby and limited, but well-loved and tolerated by the sainthearted and longsuffering people around me.  I really can't do much of anything anymore at normal capacity.  (Except lay around and watch Lost.  I can manage that with the best of them.)

What I really need to do is start prepping the freezers for postpartum.  That has been such an afterthought, which I am now regretting because cooking has become increasingly more difficult and, as much as I didn't feel like worrying about it before, now I really don't feel like tackling it.  But I really think it needs to be done - meal trains are different here than they were at our previous churches, and I have so many people in the house that have come to depend on luxuries like eating dinner every day.  So I need to get that taken care of sooner rather than later.

My canning is holding up okay, so there will at least be that available postpartum.  The kids have been eating through the fruit and applesauce like gangbusters, but I've been trying not to use the meat or premade meals so that that's all still there when we need it most.

Anyway.  Let's keep trucking along with news. 

Friday night after Atticus came home from work, we headed to the church to help set up for the Easter banquet, which was last Sunday.  Our church goes all out for Easter - we have a big meal and potluck, and wine and champagne, and dancing.  Friday night, a man came to teach us all how to waltz, and a gal from church taught us a reel.  So by Sunday, everyone was trying out their new moves.  Atticus even asked me to waltz, which I was outrageously terrible at since 1) my practice partner had been Juni, 2) I am a whale, and 3) Oey thought this would be the best position for her to join in.  

But seriously - HOW IS THIS GIANT PERSON MY CHILD?!

They all found friends to dance with.

And then Atticus and Penelope shared a dance.  So much fun.

Some other items of note we have been up to the last couple of weeks:

The boys discovered a novel way of climbing the unclimbable tree.  I'm not a fan, for the variety of reasons I think you can guess from this photo.

Penelope made a red velvet cake from scratch, to take to the Easter banquet.  It held the distinguished honor of being one of only two cakes to be devoured in its entirety, out of probably twenty-five or thirty cakes and cheesecakes total.  It was delicious.

She's mixing up a fancy icing here.

Atticus got his paycheck, as well as getting his first personal checks in the mail after opening a checking account, so we're venturing into the strange and fascinating world of money management.  Give/save/spend is drilled into them from the time they're very young, but now we're talking about emergency funds and investing and filing taxes and saving for major life expenses like trade school and a vehicle.  Nuts.  

I celebrated my 38th birthday on Tuesday of this past week.  Everyone was so sweet to me - the kids pooled their money to pay for a prenatal massage, which is seriously the best and I'm so excited to get that scheduled.  Todd got me what I had been hoping for and requested - an appointment to have our windows cleaned.  (Middle aged birthday wishes are weird.)  And then we got to go out on a date to a local Italian place that was so good.  It was a wonderful birthday!

Lolo dressed up like me:

Do you see the resemblance?

Things are going well with the pregnancy - my skin has been much more bearable lately, I have been able to breathe, and my insomnia went away.  My midwife has been urging me to eat (and eat and eat and eat and eat) and I think eating more has really helped with my sleep issues.  My back is tired and weak, but that's to be expected, and after my chiro appointment last week, I'm not in pain unless I'm sitting for long periods.  (There is a funeral for my grandpa next weekend that I'm really hoping to go to, but the amount of travel for it is daunting, since car rides are still really painful at this point.  So we will see.)

It's still strange to not know the gender of the baby.  We are nowhere near having names narrowed down, and I feel like I have all the time in the world to put that off.  But at the same time, I feel this pregnancy nearing the end and I'm starting to think more in terms of labor/delivery and postpartum prep than I was before.  It's... daunting.  It always is.  So I'm working on mentally wrapping my head around what's coming.  I need to start making lists; that always helps.  Because I'm a psycho that thinks that seeing it on a piece of paper will somehow make it more manageable when it comes time to actually face up to it.

AND LASTLY.  (Whew.  So much for keeping things brief, amiright?)

It is Holy Week!  Todd continued his tradition of washing our feet on Maundy Thursday.

Oey did NOT understand what was going on, and she did NOT approve.

I know this is a silly thing to say, but I think it is just now hitting me what a very full life we live.  It often feels so normal that I don't stop to think about it, but we are always doing something, even when we're not.  And it's just... always full.  I'm very grateful.

what's up weekly. (No more leak! No more rocks! Life is wonderful!)

Hey all!  I'm back again, and not laying on the couch whining about my back, so let's take a second to celebrate this victory.  We're starting the two-hand countdown to my due date!  Unfortunately, we forgot to take a photo before church like we normally do, so by the time we got around to it, I was looking a little less polished than I prefer for photos.  Let's do a breakdown, shall we?

First, you will notice that my face has been replaced with a well-photoshopped image of the most relevant celebrity I could think of.  (Seriously, how can I not know a single famous person anymore?  I literally could only think of Britney, but she's not looking any better than I am these days, so that doesn't help me.)  Why cover my face, you ask?  Well, because apparently without the life-changing power of makeup, my pregnancy neck just kind of tree-trunks into my pregnancy face and my whole face/neck situation has just morphed into a single volcano-shaped mass.  I look like the Hulk if the Hulk's head was smaller and his biceps were stored on his stomach.  And like the Hulk, I am busting out of my clothing, which brings me to my second highlight:

Maxi skirt and crop top.  You can't tell because I've hiked my skirt way up and yanked my shirt way down, but normally this shirt looks on me like it was drawn onto a fat character by Walt Disney.  The skirt is just one-legged pajama pants.  My skin is still driving me crazy, so the name of the clothing game is "baggy, soft, shapeless."

Pregnancy really is such a lovely, feminine time.

This week has held a number of out-of-the-ordinary events.  First, my favorite news to report: "we" finally discovered the source of the leak in the basement!  (And by "we", I obviously don't mean I had anything to do with it.)  We have been fighting this stupid leak for longer than I care to admit, but Todd finally sourced it - we have this weird outlet drain that I don't fully understand, and it must have frozen or something at some point and just shattered.  The reason the leak was so slow and we weren't noticing a difference on our water bill was because very little water actually travels through it, and it's all water that is coming from elsewhere in the house to drain.  I still don't fully understand what exactly this pipe does, other than dripping on the floor, but that's okay.

We'll get it fixed, and then our neighbor is going to help us patch the drywall, and then hopefully this debacle will be about over, other than rolling back the carpet and painting the walls.

This week also held another midwife appointment, which are still only every four weeks.  Each time I meet with my new midwife, the more I really like her.  I think she's a really great fit, and I'm grateful for her.  

We spent a lot of time outside this week, which was glorious.  I got some potatoes and peas planted in my garden.  

A friend and her boys also came over yesterday to hang out, play, and shovel rocks.  I'm sure you remember my constant complaining about the rock situation on this property - they're everywhere.  So I spent much of  last summer moving them around: shoveling them out of the chicken yard and making a new rock bed around our electrical box, after washing them all first; then the project of removing them from half of the front flower bed.  (Half of the flower bed had already been emptied of rock and then just left as a bare patch for some reason; I removed more of it and planted a few things, then mulched.)  But I still had a giant pile of rock waiting to go somewhere.  Luckily, my friend Stephanie could use it in her planting beds, we just needed to find a time to get it loaded up for her.

I set the boys to the task of filling up the trailer, and the rest of the kids joined in too.  Stephanie sat down for a little while to keep me company in my role of supervisor, but she is a better person than I am and jumped into the fray with the kids.  I just kept my supervisory role, in large part because I can barely get myself out of a reclining position at any given time these days.

It was a LOT of rock.

But now that project is DONE and I think that is about all that needs to happen to wash my hands of the rock moving for good.  I have plenty where I want it, and none where I don't (or at least, less where I don't; rocks never fully leave).  My hope for this spring is to get the boys to help me plant the rest of the boxwoods I've been wanting put out front, and then to mulch the whole planting bed.  It is going to look so nice!  (It will perhaps only serve to highlight how patchy our grass is, but one project at a time.)

The kids spent some time on bikes, which was especially fun for Finneas, as he got a new bike for his birthday last week.

When we're not outside, we've been continuing to chip away at school work.  I think we're making slow but steady progress toward my goal of being done with school a couple of weeks earlier than scheduled  It will take a bit more work, but we're close.

Penelope, in the best reading spot in the house: the nursing corner.  It's quiet, it's sunny, it's private.  It's perfect.

And that was our week!  Now I'm off to bed.  I've been dealing with some pretty serious insomnia the last couple of weeks, and I have to say I'm pooped.  I need a nap.  Wish me luck.

what's up weekly. (Two Weeks' Worth, and Finneas Turned Twelve!)

Hey guys! Sorry I was a no-show last week.  As ridiculous as it is to say it, my back was really hurting and it hurt too much to type.  Ridiculous.  But it means that I am going to cover two weeks' worth of news if I can muster the energy.  If not, this post will just leave off in a cliffhanger and you will know that I had to leave to go soak in the tub.  This is pregnancy; it's hard on us all.

THIS IS A VERY HEAVY BELLY.  Can you tell?

Okay.  What were we up to two weeks ago?  

Well, last time I blogged, I was gearing up for a grocery trip.  I ended up taking Atticus with me because he wanted to look at some stuff at Tractor Supply, and man alive. Why had it not occurred to me sooner to take him shopping with me? I was under the impression that I go more quickly when I'm on my own, that I appreciate the alone time.  BUT do you have any idea what an asset it is to have someone along with you who can lift the 40 lb bags of chicken feed into the cart?  Who can push a second cart at Aldi?  Who can bend down easily and lift a flat of tuna cans onto the lower rack of the shopping cart?  Who can run a couple of aisles over and grab that thing you forgot?  My eyes have been opened to the previous error of my ways, and I will not continue to make the same mistakes.  This new revelation has changed me.

The next day was Saturday, and I had it on my list to tackle some cleaning and build a compost bin.  Well, I got to (some of) the cleaning, but by building time, I just didn't have it in me.  My lower back has been giving me grief and I just can't do physical projects with the same gusto.  (And by 'physical projects,' I mean anything that has me moving or standing at all.)  Todd kindly offered to do it for me!  So now I not only have a compost bin, but I have one that I didn't have to build myself, and also the pleasure of watching my husband build something with his hands.  All things work together for the good of us who love Christ.

The guys and their little foreman.

This will make cleaning out the chicken coop much easier moving forward.  I have more compost material from that than I really know what to do with, mostly leaves and pine shavings mixed with chicken poop. I can mix it with the few kitchen scraps that the chickens don't eat, let it compost in the bin, and then refill the soil in my garden beds and planters with it.  Most of our food waste gets fed to the chickens, which is great because they eat things that couldn't go in the compost, like meat scraps and fat/grease and grains; but things that don't go to the chickens, like egg shells and coffee grounds and avocado peels, now don't have to go in the garbage.   

We jumped back into school after our break week and are trying to cram a little.  When I originally sat down last summer to plan our school year's schedule, I wasn't pregnant.  I didn't know at the time that my due date would fall directly on the last scheduled day of school.  Now that I am aware of this fact, I am also nonplussed.  This will not do.  So we're trying to move a little more quickly through our scheduled material so that I can have a couple weeks' buffer at the end of pregnancy.  This is a bit challenging, since our schedule is already kind of packed to the gills, and increasing prenatal appointments require us to take more days off than I had planned.  But we're trying.

Don't let that cheesy toddler grin fool you; she became less cheesy and stayed just as much toddler as the morning progressed.  School time is hard on the littlest ones.

This seems like a fine place to jump ahead for a second and mention that my midwife appointment that was scheduled for yesterday got cancelled because another mom went into labor, but I had already called off school for the day and set the kids to deep cleaning their rooms.  We took an extra day off for no reason, and it was rainy so they couldn't even play outside.  It was a super weird day.

Okay, jumping back to last week.  We got contacted early in the week by the father of a friend of ours, who owns a farm and was wondering if Atticus would like a job helping him with the work that's gearing up as we approach spring.  We got together with him on Thursday night to ask some questions and get to know him, and by Friday morning Atticus was working on pruning what he could of 800 grape vines.  He will be helping with various aspects of crops, animals, machinery, and home construction.  He is super excited, and we're excited for him.  I feel like we've hit a busy season with lots of milestones happening all at once for him.

Last Saturday, we took a day trip up to Des Moines to celebrate Finneas' 12th birthday.  He requested a knight-themed party with grilled cheese sandwiches and spaghettios.  The kids spent the day playing outside in the yard with cousins and a grand time was had by all.  

My mom made a cake for him.  How does it have this many candles?!

Lolo got him a Jack Sparrow hat/wig, and Penelope got him face paints.  Rocco got him the gift of his amiable presence, which is what Finneas values most deeply anyway.

Wednesday of this week was Finneas' actual birthday!  He requested cereal for breakfast, grilled chicken and Takis for lunch, and Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner.

Finneas numbers among my favorite people in the whole world.  He is funny, quick witted, smart, sweet.  He likes to come sit by me after dinner and just chat with me.  He is really good with Oey.  He is comfortable in his own skin and makes friends easily, and is the life of the party.  He is just such a fun member of our household, and I'm so glad we have him.

We only have a few other items of note.  I took Atticus to Walmart to get the things he'll need for work: boots and socks, shirts and jeans, work gloves, a watch.  Basic but necessary items.  He'll head out for a few hours this afternoon to keep working on those grape vines, and may spend some time out there again tomorrow.

Laurelai turned ten and a half.

And Callista pulled her own tooth out.  Her tooth was super wiggly, but Todd and Atticus were at the Men's Beer and Books night, and I Don't Do Teeth.  (Seriously, teeth give me the full-on creeps.  Grossest part of parenting.  I can clean up vomit without batting an eyelash, but don't you dare show me your loose tooth.)  Well, she decided it needed to come out, so she took matters into her own hands and just... got it out herself like an old pro.  She named it Miss Paige.

How scrappy is she?

And that is all that I can remember, and all the typing my back can take.  So that is my cue to head out!  I hope you have a great weekend.  As a send-off present, here is some nature art Callista made, to refresh your heart with gladness this Friday.