Oh, this week. Where do I even start?
We went into the weekend with a dead garbage disposal, a broken (yet again) dryer, a broken toilet, and a newly discovered water problem in the garage attic. Okay. Not ideal, but fixable. Plus, Atticus was getting ready to go to Kansas City with my parents to see Skillet perform at Winter Jam on Friday night. It was their birthday gift to him, and he was so excited, can you tell? So we started off on an optimistic foot.
(My mom and stepdad actually came up a few hours early to help set up a daybed/trundle situation in the girls' room, so we're one step closer to getting the dollhouse out of the food room and into the girls' bedroom where it belongs!)
Saturday, Todd busted his patootie around here, replacing the garbage disposal, fixing the toilet, and replacing the heating element on the dryer. By the end of the day, all were working again.
Also on Saturday, the babies turned eight months old!
Whoa?! EIGHT MONTHS? This is Knox's Shox'd face.
Eulalie is thisclose to crawling - she can scooch herself backwards, forwards, and all around in a circle (I call her the midget spinner). She is always on the move, but she still won't sit up by herself because she is always so flexed that she doesn't relax enough to sit down! She just flexes her whole body and falls backwards. She loves eating dinner with us in her new high chair and spends the entire meal SHRIEKING at the top of her lungs. Not crying or fussing, just yelling for more food. She is so talkative. She cut two new teeth on top recently and is so adorable with her new smile. We weighed her the other day and she is 12 lbs, 2 ounces. Still in 0-3 month clothing, but growing! After dinner she takes an 8 ounce bottle before bed. She's a good eater. She is the sweetest, smiliest, chattiest little Bean.
Knox is still his happy self - even when he's upset he doesn't usually even cry, he just puts his arms above his head and wrinkles his nose in disgust. He did start finally start laughing occasionally the day after Christmas - it was the best Christmas present I could receive to hear him giggle! He still doesn't love to do it. He seems averse to making grand emotional noises of any kind, though he will coo or whimper or kind of grunt. He loves to mimic me shaking my head at him, and he is mesmerized by Todd's face. He just stares and stares and stares and won't break eye contact. He has a funny smirk that only Todd gets, and a wrinkled-nose grin that he usually saves for just me. He weighed 12 lbs, 7 ounces, only an ounce heavier than last month, but I think it's because he's been moving so much more lately. He's not on his way to crawling yet, but he does spin around in circles that Penelope calls his Happy Donuts.
They're still taking three naps a day and nursing is going miraculously well. And they can both say Dada!
The girls made brownies together on Saturday morning.
Oey can't see over the counter, so she always reaches up and quickly grabs whatever she can get her hands on and then stuffs it in her mouth. She has even rubbed her hand on raw meat and then licked it before I could stop her! At least here it seems the loot is worthwhile and hygienic. Perseverance pays off.
Sunday morning at church, Atticus began to feel a little strange, and by Monday morning the barfs had landed. I got school done with Callista in the morning, and did a small bit of school with the middle schoolers, then we took a break to watch the inauguration. We have done zero schoolwork since then. We have been hit hard.
Atticus fell sick Monday, then Rocco and Finneas joined him Tuesday. Later in the day, Callista fell. Laurelai and Penelope had been helping me so much through it all, but they fell sick on Wednesday. Luckily, Atticus was feeling better by yesterday because the littlest three girls (Juni, Oey, and Eulalie) all got it, and Todd and I weren't feeling great either. I needed all the extra hands I could get - sick little kids are always much higher maintenance than older kids, but I was surprised to discover that twins are a whole new element to juggle. Eulalie just wanted to be held and cuddled constantly, but I needed to put her down sometimes to feed Knox, and I also didn't want him to feel neglected since I was spending so much time snuggling her, so I was super glad Atticus was well enough to hold the "off" baby for me.
The living room at the beginning of the week: a few strung out sickies, but things still looked somewhat under control. As the week progressed...
...we got nappers at random times of day...
...then more friends to come hang on the couch and on the floor....
...then the chairs started filling up, and we moved a mattress to the living room floor for more sleeping space...
...by the end of the week it looked like a drug house in here - people draped over every available surface in various states of consciousness. Abandoned food and other detritus everywhere.
It has been rough: very, very high fevers, vomiting, insomnia, chest and sinus congestion, fatigue, sore throats, painful and bloodshot eyes, aches, headaches. And to top it all off, I had a clogged milk duct that kept getting worse and more painful as the week went on, and I was starting to worry it would turn into mastitis.
Last night was the first real table meal we've had in days - the kids have been on a steady (or not-so-steady) diet of yogurt, applesauce, soup, tea, juice, and toast. I have been so thankful for all the food I have canned and at the ready - we have instant canned soup, ingredients for stew and pot roast, broth, applesauce, honey. All just ready and waiting for their moment to shine. Yesterday, Todd ran to the store and got some supplies, including raspberries and strawberries for Laurelai, who always craves berries when she's sick, and kombucha for Penelope. Are we raising bougie kids? Maybe but I'm okay with it. He also got me some supplements for the clogged duct and that's already feeling much better.
As I write this, Todd and I are both feeling okay. Todd has a lot of chest congestion, and I am still running a fever and dealing with joint pain, but we never got the barfs. Knox has not gotten anything yet. Juni and Laurelai are still pretty miserable, but I think I can say with confidence that everyone else seems to be on the upswing, though it does seem to come and go so it's hard to tell.
There have been silver linings to all of this. We've watched through an entire season of All Creatures Great and Small in the last two days. My toilet and dryer are both in brand new working order, which otherwise would have made this story even more eventful. I have been bleaching all three bathrooms everyday, and I have to say I'll be sad to see that state of cleanliness get abandoned. (We do clean the two public bathrooms every day, but it's the kids' job and it isn't done quite as well as a daily wipe down by yours truly. Not to toot my own sponge-wielding horn or anything.) And it's been during a bitterly cold snap so it's not like we missed out on any fun time outside - and now that everyone's on the mend, the weather is turning for the better so hopefully we can get out in the sunshine today.
Folding laundry and watching James Herriot are not the worst ways to spend an afternoon.
I'm not exactly sure how we're going to make up the schoolwork we've missed. The easy, and most likely, answer would be to just call this week a break week and pick up where we left off next week. But that will move our last day of school back a week, and I know I'm not going to want to spend an extra week inside in May because of this. So I'm desperately on the hunt for a different answer.
And there we are. I had planned to have a very boring week so I would have time to document more of the time between Christmas and now, but here we are. Here's to hoping next week is painfully boring.
