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.