what's up August (and everything after).

Well, here we are - after this post, I have officially gotten current with all my back blogging from when the computer died!  So, after today's blog, we will back to our regularly scheduled (and occasionally sporadic) weekly updates.

BUT. Not quite yet.  Let me sum up our August-So-Far for you.

I have been trying to get everything in order for back to school, while we've also been plugging away slowly but surely at summer school.  One of my big summer projects has been to get the 'guts' of the house cleaned out and organized - the garage attic, the storage room, the food room, and the garage.  I am getting really close and feeling so good about things.  There's still work to be done, but I think this is the least cluttered our storage spaces have been since we moved in three (three!) years ago, and I feel like I can breathe.  I tackled our closet recently as well, in an effort to make a little reading space for Laurelai.

All my kids are very different in their interest in and proclivity toward school.  Laurelai is a kid who is naturally very good at math and loves stories, but reading has been a slow process for her, and she is easily distracted.  She is creative and imaginative, and her physical senses are highly fine-tuned, so noises and sights and activity just get her brain spinning in a thousand directions.  She has struggled to find a system or routine that has made focusing on her schoolwork easy and smooth.  

And then this tiny Pottery Barn chair showed up on FB Marketplace.  I cleaned out the back of our small-ish closet to give her a calm and quiet place to sit and read, and it has made a HUGE difference in her school time.  Because it has made it much easier for her to get her work done, it has also helped her feel more enthusiastic about and less burdened by reading and school in general.

She still has one more week of summer school before jumping into the full school year, but she's feeling optimistic.  The high school kids started their new school year this past week already and are getting used to the heavier workload.  Penelope is going into tenth, and Atticus is going into eleventh - can you even believe that?!  

This past Monday, Penelope took the first of three CLEP exams she has prepped for, and thankfully passed it.  (Introductory Business Law!  Passed on the first try, as an incoming high school sophomore!)  To say I'm proud of her is an understatement.  She is hoping to get her AAS in Accounting by the time she graduates high school, which seems challenging but achievable.  We're trying to get as many CLEP tests under her belt as possible, since it's essentially free college credit, and nine of the required courses in the Accounting program can be substituted with a passed CLEP exam.  This coming Monday she will take the College Algebra test, and the Monday after that she'll go for College Composition.  Once those are done, she'll start studying for a new test but hasn't decided which one to go for next.

While we were at the test center, I fortuitously met someone who is a teacher at our church's affiliated Christian school, and he was telling me about a program here in town where students can work on tech and trade certifications for free while in high school, so I've started looking into it for Atticus.  There are so, so, so many things I love about homeschooling, but the flexibility/sovereignty at the high school level is quickly moving up the list.  (Though, navigating it all is a new adventure for me, and it's not always easy to sort through, but we're learning as we go.)

The babies are in their own school of hard knocks right now.  They just turned 15 months this week!  Knox just popped two new teeth through on the bottom, bringing his grand total to six.  Eulalie is teething SIX teeth right now - four molars and her upper canines - which will bring her grand total to fourteen teeth.  I'm pretty sure I don't even have that many.  She is just one giant set of teeth with a couple of eyeballs and a few little baby hairs stuck on top.

The babies are down to a once-a-day nursing when they wake up in the morning, and I'm pretty sure I could drop that feeding without too much fuss at this point if I wanted to.  And I might want to, but I'm not sure yet.  Twins change how decisions are made - it's the only time of day when I'm guaranteed one-on-one time with each of them, and their babyhood has been kind of a whirlwind anyway, so am I really ready to close the book on that stage yet?  And anyway, with Knox's food sensitivities, it's nice to know he's getting one big boost of nutrition in the morning that I don't have to put any thought or worry into, etc. etc. etc.  Anyway, we may be getting close to the end of nursing, but we're not there quite yet.  This is the longest I've ever nursed any baby - and it's two babies to boot!  

I'll have to update you more another time on all the things the babies are doing, and all they ways in which they're growing and changing and really coming into "themselves."  There's just so much to say!  I've said it before and I'll say it again - twins are such a strange, wonderful, miraculous phenomenon.  I have loved having twins.  For every hard part (and there are definitely hard parts), there are forty fun, amazing, delightful parts.  Which is true of every baby, but just exponentially more in all directions when there are more babies.

In milestone news, Eulalie started taking steps this week!

And in more milestone news, Knox got his first Big Kid Haircut with the clippers!

One of the most undeniable realities of twin toddlers is that someone is always underfoot.  Even if you've contained one, the other one is all up in your grill making mischief.  And by "the one who's always making mischief," I mean Eulalie.  Always Eulalie.  Never not Eulalie.

In our own milestone news, Todd and I celebrated our eighteenth wedding anniversary this week!  Our marriage is now an adult!

And lastly, we've had some fun adventures already this month.  First, we headed up to Iowa a couple of weeks ago to attend a family reunion on my dad's side.  My dad, many of my aunts and uncles, and many of my cousins were there and it was so wonderful to see everyone.  It has been a long time.  Many of my younger kids had never met anyone on that side, and of the ones who had, most didn't remember many of the family members there because it has been so long.  So it was nice acquainting (or reacquainting) everyone.

We made a day of it, driving there and back in one day.  The twins especially didn't love the drive and were so exhausted by the end of it, and Eulalie had a major poop explosion on the way home, but all's well that ends well, and I'm glad we went.

And our last notable adventure before wrapping up this post: a trip to the kind-of-local pool.  We attempted to go to our city pool, but discovered they were closed on weekdays for the rest of the season.  So we drove to the next town over, which is still really close and the pool is newer and nicer (because everything in that town is newer and nicer), but also more expensive.  I'm not even going to make you nauseous to hear how much we paid to get into a pool.  But the kids had such a blast.  It was so much fun.

It's not obvious in this photo, but Ophelia LOVED the pool.  She was a total water baby.  The problem was, she kept wandering far from me and was a complete submersion risk.  She loved it too much for her own good.

And with that, we are now completely caught up to current!  Here's how Knox feels about it.

Smug.  Real smug.

See you next week!