Last Sunday, Todd had the opportunity to preach on Psalm 11 at church! It was so great getting to see him up there again - it's been over four years since he's preached. Which is crazy to think about - a lot has happened in that time.
Monday, I cancelled school so I could go grocery shopping before the port worker strike started, just in case things got crazy after that. It was an all day endeavor, and I was exhausted by the end of it. I found a good deal on arm roast, so I also got those prepped as stew meat and put in jars to can the next day. I also cleaned out the kitchen fridge. It was such a long day.
Tuesday, we worked hard to get caught up on the work we missed the day before, and I took Atticus to go mow a friend's yard in the afternoon. Todd took the kids with him to go get milk while I prepped dinner. I haven't made that drive with them since the twins were born, since evenings are really busy with the babies, and it was also so hot this summer that I didn't want to put the babies in the van for that long. (The back of the van has spotty air conditioning, and it was even too hot for a while for Todd to take the other kids, so they would stay home with me while he went.) It was nice to have a little bit of quiet time before dinner when the babies were sleeping and the kids were out of the house - I got the kitchen cleaned, some cheese made, and dinner prepped all without interruption.
Wednesday was our regular "fun" school day - we did map drill and math drill in the morning, then I read to the younger kids from "Five Children and It," which they're loving. In the afternoon, I read to the younger kids again from their geography books, and we mapped Marco Polo's progress from Venice to Jerusalem. After that, the big kids joined us and we read from "Tom Sawyer" for an hour, which everyone is really enjoying - including me. The voices in that one are fun to do! I really enjoy doing books with lots of voices or different accents.
Yesterday, we had another "regular" school day, though I set the high school kids to doing their afternoon read aloud time independently so I could get a nap in. I still need to nap many days through the week, and am needing to keep an early bedtime. The babies have started back to waking up multiple times a night, which is tolerable because I know that getting those extra feedings in through the night is good for their growth and helpful for my milk supply. But it also means I need to be extra diligent about getting sleep at other times or I just really can't function.
Supply issues are still a forefront stressor. The last few days have gone a bit more smoothly, probably helped in part or in full by those extra night feedings. The babies aren't as fussy and I'm not finding myself needing to make as many supplemental bottles as I was needing to last week. A friend has given me a lot of frozen breastmilk that she pumped but didn't end up using, which is just a huge blessing. It makes supplementing a lot less stressful, but my ultimate hope is to not need to depend on outside sources of milk for the babies.
Looking pretty proud of themselves.
Speaking of the babies, they both learned to roll themselves from their backs to their tummies this week - and within about five minutes of one another! First of all, let me say that I find twins to be so remarkable. Watching them be simultaneously individuals and also twins blows my mind - they even poop at the same time most of the time! So wonderfully strange. So anyway, they're rolling around now, so you never know when you walk away if they'll be in the same place you set them down!
Well, I think that's about it for the news. Small items of note: we still have nine (NINE.) chickens, most of which are looking like females. (That's too many chickens.) And unfortunately, none have started to lay eggs yet. (So many pointless, smelly chickens.) I'm hoping that that changes soon, and that we have at least a couple roosters so we don't have quite such a difficult task facing us when it comes time to decide which ones to keep. (We'll be giving our B String chickens back to the friend who gave us the incubator and the eggs.)
Unrelatedly, Finneas found this IN OUR HOUSE. NO THANK YOU.
And that's all, folks!
