Last I left you, it was Halloween day and we were preparing for an evening of trick-or-treating, a Reformation Day cheeseboard, and a post-dinner viewing of the Luther movie. It all went off without a hitch: the kids got dressed in their costumes, and we enjoyed our cheeseboard alongside some very colorful characters. When we finished eating, we headed out to beg candy from our neighbors, which was really fun. Our neighborhood is a perfect neighborhood for trick-or-treating: it's small, closed to thru traffic, and full of old people and families. Minus a couple of houses that get too into the dark side of Halloween, it's really perfect. When we got back, we put the babies to bed, the kids sorted their candy for a while, then they each picked a treat to eat while we watched Luther in celebration of Reformation Day.
Juni helped me set up the cheeseboard.
For the kickoff holiday to our feasting season, it is a fun and full night!
The next morning around 4:00 a.m., I woke up feeling wretched. I spent all day in bed, sleeping, and spent that day and the following five days barfing up anything I ate or drank. I have never had a stomach bug last that long. I powered through the best I could, especially since we'd missed so much schoolwork the previous week when the kids were sick. I couldn't really afford to fall further behind. But that said, I do think I cancelled some class times, and maybe even a whole day once? I honestly can't remember much.
I do know that that Tuesday was a full day - most importantly, it was Rocco's tenth birthday!
This kid is silly. He's loyal and sweet natured and hates being the center of attention. He and Finneas are joined at the hip. He likes drawing and playing with G.I. Joes, and he's currently caught up in Ninjago Mania like the rest of the kids. He's affectionate and great with the babies. He's good at school. He never fails to come find me to tell me goodnight before he gets tucked into bed by Todd. I like him and I love him to pieces.
Rocco got some roller skates from my parents for his birthday, so the kids have all pulled out their skates and scooters and turned the garage into a roller rink.
Because it was birthday day, I made his requested meals (which were mercifully easy for me while I was in my death throes - cereal for breakfast, macaroni and hot dogs for lunch, root beer floats for dessert). We were supposed to go out for Mexican food that evening after picking up milk and voting in our local elections, but we opted to wait a week since I wouldn't be able to go.
By Thursday, I was feeling better, just a little weak from not having eaten anything for so long. I spent Thursday and Friday recovering, and on Saturday we headed up to Iowa to celebrate birthdays - my mom, my niece, and Rocco all have birthdays really close together (and Todd, too, but we didn't try to cram his celebration in while we were up there). My sister, my mom and I went out to lunch to celebrate my mom, and then we came back to the house for cake and presents for the birthday kids. We headed home that evening, but on the last stretch of the drive, my throat and my head started to really hurt.
By Sunday morning I had spiked another fever, and I was sick for the next couple of days with something Covid-y. I had a cough, a headache, a fever, and my throat just killed to talk or swallow. Luckily, I'd mixed up some fire cider in September, so I took a few shots of that each day with a little whiskey and honey, and I really think that helped my immune system kick into gear and get rid of all the crud in just a couple of days, but golly. It has felt like a really long stretch of being really sick.
By Tuesday evening I was feeling better, so we went out to eat for Rocco's belated birthday dinner. There's a Mexican restaurant he's chosen every year since we've lived here, and even though we only go in there once a year, the owner/manager(?) recognized us. He was making comments about how big the kids were getting, and trying to master all their names. We ordered our food, and they started bringing us extras like queso. At the end of our meal, they brought the kids fried ice cream. It was so kind.
I usually just order them a couple plates of appetizer nachos to share and it's always way more than they can eat.
But it didn't even stop there. When they brought us our check, I took the receipt without looking at it and asked if we were to take it to the front to pay, or if we should just pay here at the table. He was good natured and said, "No! No!" I thought he was joking so I played along with the "your money's no good here" bit, and handed the receipt to Todd to pay. But when he handed it back to me to look at, it said we owed $0. I thought it was a mistake, so I looked at the guy and he said he wanted to bless us. He gestured that the Lord had encouraged him to wipe our bill. It was so kind, and we were all stunned.
I have only ever had overwhelmingly positive experiences taking the kids to Mexican restaurants. The staff is always so excited to see such a large family come in, which always feels kind of disorienting right at first. One year, the waiters at this particular restaurant were literally pulling the decorations off the walls to give to the kids as gifts. We've never had an experience quite as positive as the one this week, of course! But I genuinely love taking the kids out to eat at Mexican places.
That was such a highlight.
Since Tuesday, we've been kind of careening through the school week, trying to catch up on the last two or three weeks of work that got shuffled around or dropped when everyone was feeling sick. I think we will actually be caught back up by the end of today, but I'm hesitant to speak too soon.
The babies thought we were all eating at the table, so they fussed to be put into their seats while we did school. I gave them a few crackers and they stayed so calm during table time. Such good little pupils!
In the afternoon, the high school kids and I talk about what they're reading in their independent reading assignments, and discuss current events. We're also reading a book together on the Congressional debates on slavery during the 1830's and 1840's. It makes for a ton of great conversation. This is the culmination of all the early years of homeschooling when it was much more labor intensive; now I get to sit with my teenagers in the afternoons, drinking coffee, reading books, and talking about worldview issues. Every day. It is so much fun.
Lastly, I will just mention that Knox is officially weaned now, so that's the end of the breastfeeding journey with the twins. It was mercifully so easy to wean him. I had mentioned that Lalie had self-weaned a month or two ago - she just decided one day that she was over it. But I wasn't quite ready to give up nursing Knox, and he was still content with it, so I kept going, even though I'm pretty sure he wasn't getting much milk. (It didn't really matter, since I was only nursing him once a day, first thing in the morning before sitting him in his high chair with his "real" breakfast.) But with the chaos of the last couple weeks, there were a couple of mornings where I just sat him at the table right away instead of nursing, and he didn't even notice we'd missed a beat. So at the beginning of this week, I just officially pulled the plug and he's literally been none the wiser.
I was worried I would deal with mastitis or clogged ducts, or even just engorgement, but there has literally been nothing. I must not have been producing almost anything at all. So all in all, it has been the easiest weaning transition I can remember having with any of the kids- and it was weaning twins (so I was dealing with a double supply), both of whom were older than any of my other kids were when I weaned them. So that has been such a kindness from the Lord, since it really could have gone much differently.
So the babies are officially toddlers. That is wild and sad and happy and I should throw us a party for making it through the baby stage with twins, but I don't have time because I'm currently in the toddler stage with twins, who are literally everywhere at once, wreaking havoc and inflicting destruction everywhere they go. So maybe we'll wait on the party planning until such time that twin life settles into a season of calm. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.) (Ha.)
