what's up weekly. (I got wordy this week. #srrynotsrry)

Happy Friday, everyone!  This week has been a good one, full of mostly normal stuff, a few exciting things, an injury, and lots of time at home.

Friday night, two of our favorite babysitters from Cedar Falls, Ellie and Bethany, came all the way down to stay with us for the weekend.  It was a blast.  

A photo posted by Todd Van Voorst (@toddhenryvanvoorst) on Oct 9, 2016 at 8:54pm PDT

Saturday morning the kids got up to find the girls here and kind of lost their minds.  We spent the morning at home, then spent some time out hiking the trails at Rock Bridge.  We got zero pictures of that on the nice camera because we're huge idiots. Luckily, Todd had his phone on him.

A photo posted by Todd Van Voorst (@toddhenryvanvoorst) on Oct 8, 2016 at 3:36pm PDT

A photo posted by Todd Van Voorst (@toddhenryvanvoorst) on Oct 8, 2016 at 2:33pm PDT

Saturday night, the girls watched the kids for us so that we could go on a date.  We headed to a restaurant we'd been wanting to try out for a while that serves Cajun food.  Any kind of restaurant orienting their menu around spicy shellfish in cream sauce is fine by me.  And daaaang.  It was so. good.  I about died.  We will definitely be eating there again.  I can predict that whenever the next pregnancy strikes, we will probably spend a large portion of Todd's income there.

A photo posted by Todd Van Voorst (@toddhenryvanvoorst) on Oct 8, 2016 at 5:51pm PDT

After we got home, our friends Josh and Megan came to crash on our air mattress for the night, so it was a full house.  It was so fun having everyone here!

Sunday night, we had a Connection Group leaders' meeting at a friend's house.  Atticus ran in the door, somehow hit his toe on the floor (I'm still not totally clear on what happened), and spent the rest of the night absolutely sobbing.  He was in so much pain.  We decided to head home early so he could soak it and then go to sleep, and then we'd see what we were dealing with in the morning.

Well, he was totally out of commission for three full days, and is still in the 'gingerly healing' phase.  Monday, Tuesday, and most of Wednesday, he spent the entire day either sitting at the table or sitting on the couch with an ice pack wrapped around his foot.  I had to carry him on my back to get him up and down the stairs and take him to the bathroom.  (He is wiry, but he is SOLID, so carrying him is no small feat.)  Wednesday, he was able to start putting a little weight on it, so Penelope made him this 'wheelchair' for his foot, and he kind of scooted around on it.  It was genuinely helpful.  (Please ignore the fact that he's still in his jammies.  Wearing jammies helps you heal faster.)

By yesterday, he was able to walk slowly on his heel, and he seems to be on the mend.

On Monday the dishwasher guy came and installed our new dishwasher, and Todd installed our new washer.  I am now living in the twenty-first century once again, and I couldn't be more thrilled.  Plus, our dishwasher is so nice.  And I don't just mean fancy (which it is!), but I mean, like, literally nice to me.  It asks me when I want it to start washing.  It tells me exactly how many minutes are left in any given cycle, and it sings at me when it's done with the load.  Plus, it fits even my deepest crock pot and tallest spoons, and there are no visible buttons on the front.  It's like someone asked themselves, "What kind of features would Paige Van Voorst hope for in a dishwasher... and a friend?" and then they went from there.

Other than that, our most major news was food-related.  (Isn't it always?)  This little guy got his very own seat at the breakfast table this week, and tried some scrambled eggs.  He really liked stuffing them in his mouth; he did not seem to get the hang of what to do with them once they were in there.  He also had his very first chunks of pickles and some bone broth.  He was a fan of both.

Please ignore our sad, booger-colored walls.

And that was our week!  How was yours?

GLORIOUS DAY!

After a long, arduous six-week stretch of crying over all my broken appliances, I can now say that I am now the proud owner of a functioning dishwasher AND a functioning washing machine.  GLORYHALLELUJAH.

No more trying to scrub the insides of our milk bottles with soap and rice because the bottle brushes weren't long enough to reach inside.  No more boiling water to sanitize the insides of those bottles after the soap-and-rice thing only worked okay.  No more driving our laundry halfway across town to do at a friend's so that we had access to such luxuries as underwear and kitchen towels.  And I am a brand new, grateful, singing-and-dancing lady.

So here's to my new best friends, GE and Maytag:  May your life be ever long and your stainless be ever shiny. 

your feelings are real, but they can be liars.

This weekend, we headed over to Rock Bridge State Park for a hike with friends.  The water was lower this time than the last time we went, and it was possible to actually walk underneath the Rock Bridge.  Penelope, who tends to be our most timid kiddo, refused to go underneath because she was afraid it would collapse on her.  So, after a failed attempt to convince her to try it, we walked back over to the trail to wait for everyone else to get done exploring.

Once we were back on the trail, though, we had a good opportunity to talk about how, 'our feelings are real, but they can be liars.'  Her fear was a very real feeling, and while it is a very good thing to acknowledge how we feel, her fear was telling her something would happen that, realistically speaking, was not going to happen.  She was trusting her fear more than she was trusting reason and truth, and she was allowing that to dictate her behavior.  People always act in response to who or what they trust most.

This photo is from a different trip, since we forgot the camera this weekend.

There is a growing trend of parenting 'experts' essentially telling us that our kids' feelings are the most true things about them.  Our kids are no more than a sum of their emotions, and our job as parents is to identify and validate every single thing they might be feeling at a given moment, or we risk smothering their truest selves.

I absolutely believe that it is important to show compassion without condescension for our children and their 'big feelings.'  Feelings are valid.  They're real.  And they can be so, so good.  But it is so very important to teach our kids how to discern whether their feelings are telling them true things, or lies, by comparing what our emotions are telling us with what is objectively true.  The job of our feelings is to follow what's true - such as when we get angry about injustice, or respond in joy and affection when we know we're loved - rather than dictate what we believe to be true.  They were not made to be the sole force driving our behavior if we haven't first asked ourselves if they're telling us the truth.

And our children are strong.  They are insightful.  From as early as toddlerhood, children are absolutely capable of rising above false, lying emotions to choose 'right' and 'true.'  I often tell even our youngest kiddos, "It is okay to feel angry [or fill-in-the-blank], but your anger is not an excuse to act like that."  It's as simple as that at the start, and am I often amazed at how quickly a toddler can respond to reason like this, and their emotions often follow suit.  

Penelope and I stood on that trail and talked for a little bit - "Fear is telling you a story, babe.  It is lying to you, and telling you things that aren't true.  You're feeling scared, and I can understand that.  But I need you to take a breath and open your eyes to what is true: your brothers and sister and Daddy are all under that bridge, having a wonderful time - the reality is that the bridge is not collapsing.  And as your mommy, I would never encourage you to do something that would put you at unnecessary risk.  Will you trust me more than your fear?"

And she trusted me.  She was able to overcome her feeling of fear by hearing truth, and she saw that she is capable of telling her feelings that they aren't in charge of her decisions when they're lying to her.  And she had a blast under that bridge.  And when we came to the next cave, she didn't even hesitate to check it out, because she told her feelings who is boss, and her feelings responded beautifully to truth.  And I was so very, very proud of her.

weekly 'what's up.'

So, you know those weeks where you kind of just want to fake your own death and move away to an island where there's no cell reception because you're just kind of over it?  I mean, neither do I, I was just asking for a friend.  No, my week was great.  My week was uber manageable.  My week did not involve praying for the rapture while standing at the appliance service desk at Lowe's so I could avoid dealing with our appliance problems any longer.  Cough.

Anyway, so it goes.  So let's talk about the good stuff, yes?

Saturdays and Wednesdays are the kids' bath days around here.  Maybe they should get bathed more regularly, but it works for us.  And bath time always turns into a social event, for some reason.  So this was the start to our day on Saturday:

Later that day, the kids spent time outside.  The weather was strangely cool, so they all put on jackets, including Laurelai, who stuffed her tiny self into a somehow-even-tinier sweater.

Finneas looked so cool and grown-up in his jacket...

...until he bent over and we were all reminded how little he still is.  And how Day of the Week underwear is always funnier when sported by a four-year-old who never has any idea what day it actually is.

Also?  Rocco got a haircut, and Atticus continued to work diligently at excavating the site of our retaining wall.

Sunday, we had church in the park and a potluck, and then we came home and had a dance party in our jammies.  Meaning, the kids were just in their skivvies.

Monday was pretty standard.  Tuesday, Todd went out and bought us a new washer because the stupid old washer finally bit the dust for good.  Wednesday, he tried to install the dishwasher but the electrical hookup was weird, so we're going to need to call in a pro, so we still have no functioning dishwasher.  So now we have two huge appliance boxes sitting in our living room for an yet-undisclosed period of time.  The dishwasher guy should call me to set up an install appointment by next Tuesday.  The washer we'll do ourselves, but we won't have time to get to it until at least Monday.

So our laundry is piling up and I'm taking it a friend's tomorrow to get some of it washed, so I can at least have clean towels and sheets on hand for the friends that are coming to stay this weekend.  

Thursday morning, we picked up our monthly Azure order. (Fifteen pounds of butter, fifteen pounds of potatoes, and some pickles.  We like to party.)  We did morning school. We babysat a friend's kiddo  and then dropped her off at preschool.  We ran to Lowe's to sign the install paperwork for the dishwasher and ran to the grocery store.  I had a phone chat with a bestie, babysat a friend's daughter for a few hours, cleaned the house for this weekend's company, had another phone chat with another great friend, and (as if I had to tell you) ate so many Coping Fries and Coping Nachos to handle it all that I rivaled Kobayashi.

Today, I will be doing laundry and grocery shopping and doing school... and then falling into a coma around 2:00 p.m.

It's okay.  This lady will be holding down the fort for me while I'm... away.  I have full confidence in her abilities.

school days.

Our school routine has fallen into place (for the most part), and it's going really well.  Each day of the week looks a little different, though our breakfast routine stays pretty much the same each morning.  I make breakfast, feed Rocco, and then while all the kids are sitting there, with their hands and mouths (relatively) occupied, we do our Morning Basket stuff:  Bible, poetry, memory work, folk songs and hymns.  I also read a chapter from our free-read book.  (Right now, we're in Brighty of the Grand Canyon, and all the kids are loving it.  When I pull it out, even Laurelai goes nuts and yells, "It's Bwyteeee!")

(Some days, I depend on Brighty a little too heavily to cheer this three-year-old up, such as on Scrambled Egg Day.  Everyone tells you about the Terrible Two's, but no one thinks to mention the Absolutely Maddening Threes.  Maybe because it doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily.)

While we do Morning Basket, Rocco crawls around, scavenging whatever bits he can find under the table and generally getting into mischief.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, we have more traditional school days.  After breakfast and Morning Basket, the kids do their daily chores, and then the little kids head to the basement to play/fight/break stuff, and Rocco goes down for a nap.  Meanwhile, the big kids sit down to do their table work: math, reading and handwriting.  It takes them 30-60 minutes, depending on how motivated they're feeling that day, and how many times I make them re-do their handwriting.  We're usually done by about 11:00.

We break for some play time, lunch, and after-lunch chores, and then we cuddle on the couch to do our read-alouds.  These books are anything from Aesop's Fables, to biographies of historic Americans, to history of British kings, to James Herriot, to Shakespeare.  This week, we read E. Nesbit's re-telling of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and then the kids re-told the story using this cool finger puppet theater I found on Amazon.  Read-aloud time is my favorite part of the school day.

Wednesday and Fridays are a little different.  On Wednesdays we spend our mornings listening to audiobooks on our way to and from the Amish. (Right now we're in Charlotte's Web, but already this year we've listened through Mr. Popper's Penguins, and an AWESOME reading of Peter Pan done by Jim Dale.)  In the afternoons they do art or handicrafts.  We're currently focusing on watercolor painting and bead-stringing crafts.

On Friday mornings, we do "tea time," where I make them tea and we sit around doing art study and music/composer study.  It's all very high-brow.  We're currently studying Mary Cassatt and Antonin Dvorjak.  On Friday afternoons, I send them out to the yard with a 'nature observation' assignment, and they spend time sketching in their nature journals.

And that gives a rough idea of our school week!  The thing with homeschool is that I know the routine will change soon enough (it's all kind of fluid, so you change things up as needed, like when the Amish family we buy milk from asked us to start coming on Wednesdays instead of Mondays, so we switched our days around, or when I started watching a friend's daughter on Fridays so we ended up flexing our mornings to make it work).  But for now, this routine has been keeping us on track without burning us out, so I call that a win!

rocco's first haircut.

I always promised myself that I would never become one of those moms that gets too sentimental about baby hair.  Being too sentimental about baby hair is a surefire way to end up with a mulleted kid, or a baby boy with a flowing, foot-long mane.  No to the thanks.  It's just not worth it.

However.

Rocco is still a baby-baby.  Forget the fact that Atticus had his first haircut at four months.  Forget the fact that Rocco is now ten months old, and even starting to walk.  He's ancient by Van Voorst haircut standards.  Plus, he was in that stage of perpetual bedhead that is your first cue to bust out the scissors.  But still.  Forget all that.  He is still too little for a haircut.

Except that he's not.  And the back of his hair was getting grossly long and scraggly on his neck.  I hate that.  So I finally caved and let Todd cut his hair.  And he looks so much better for it.  Older, but better.

We started off outside, for two reasons: one, for easy cleanup, and two, for some natural light.  (Actually, it was mainly the second thing.  I have realized that, if I want photos of my kids' milestones while we're living here, they will have to take place outside if I don't want the photos to turn out all yellow and blurry.)  

Rocco clearly had a death wish.

The leaf was a safer choice, although less thrilling.

Half the stuff you try to do for babies is easier if they're laying down.  Keeps their head still and their arms somewhat immobilized.  That's a little mom tip from me to you: figure out ways to trap your kid in order to make your job easier.  You're welcome.

After Scissors Snippy Fun Time Yeah, we headed inside to the bathroom to finish up with the clippers.  Todd is seriously a black-belt barber.  (And a black belt in Tai Kwon Do.  I'm dead serious.  Don't believe me?  Challenge him to kick you in the sternum.  I dare you.)  Anyway, he does a really great job on the boys' hair, and it ended up looking way better once he busted out the clippers to kind of even out and blend the back of Rocco's hair.  Rocco didn't exactly love the clippers, but he didn't hate them either.  It seemed more like apathy, bordering on disdain, with a hint of curiosity.

And that is how our tiny man started growing up before my very eyes.  (Luckily for me, he's still in 3-6 month clothing, so I can still pretend he's just a tiny, bitty infant for a while longer.)

what's up weekly.

This week we got back into the grind after taking a week off from school.  It was great to get some structure back into our days, although I will say that it wasn't without some whining from all involved.  But before I get into whining about the whining, let's back up.

Our most major news of note this week is that ROCCO TOOK HIS FIRST INDEPENDENT STEPS!  I don't have photos, since my hands were busy trying to keep him from cracking his head open in an inevitable drunk-fall, but trust me: it happened.  And it felt like the best day of my life.  That's the funny thing with kids: every time they do something new, it's like it's the first time you're ever seeing it happen.  It doesn't matter that you walk every single day of your own life without thinking twice about it; it doesn't matter that you've seen X-number of kids before this one take their own first steps.  It is just so exciting to see them hitting those tiny major milestones.  And it is just as exciting every single time, with every single kid.  I'm so glad I get to be here for these moments!

In other, less major news, we started off the weekend with an adventure at Lowe's, where the boys got to build fire boats.  After that, we stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up our grocery order, and uh, hello: ordering online and having someone just deliver it straight to the van was a game-changer.  I will be doing it that way from here on out, forever and ever, amen.  Between the thing at Lowe's, our stop at Walmart, and our bi-weekly trip to Aldi, we were still only gone for about two hours.  MIND BLOWN.

Saturday night, a couple of girls from Cedar Falls came and stayed the night, and came to church with us on Sunday.

On Monday, we hopped back into the swing of school, refreshed and (mostly) ready for it.  The kids don't really mind school; it's the other stuff about structured days they sometimes get worn down by - namely, chores.  When school is on break, chores tend to be on break as well.  So it was a sad, sad day in the Van Voorst house when I told them it was time to deep clean their rooms and strip their sheets on Monday morning.

Monday afternoon, I popped all the sheets into the washer, and then moved them to the dryer.  I'd been noticing that the washer hadn't been draining properly lately, but I figured I could live with it.  Then, when I went to add a second load into the washer for the day, the washer died.  Like, it spit out a little water, and then it rolled over onto its back and its eyes turned to "X"s and its tongue lolled out of its mouth.  It was a really excellent moment for me.

See, I've been hand-washing dishes for the last three weeks, since our dishwasher is also dead.  So I'm already kind of on the outs with our appliances.  But the thing is, I'm capable of hand-washing dishes.  Not so much with hand-washing dirty laundry.  For one thing, I don't have one of those scrubby washboard things (unless my abs count), and I'm fresh out of lye soap, so hand-washing seven people's laundry is not really an option for me.  Having a functioning washing machine is kind of a big deal around here.  But we just dropped serious cash on the (yet-to-be-delivered) dishwasher, so...

I was, um... unhappy.  So I spent Monday night pouting and crying and not sleeping and trying to force the washer to resurrect.  And then I spent Tuesday praying for my obvious total depravity, as displayed in my ingratitude and temper tantrums, and also trying to force the washer to resurrect.  And then Wednesday, Todd lined up a friend with a truck to go with him to Menard's to buy a used washer, and half an hour before he was set to leave, I decided to try the washer one last time, just for kicks.

And do you know what that stupid, stubborn, prankster of a washer did?  It started up just fine.  It ran cold water.  It ran hot water.  It drained properly.  It acted like the most medicated of problem youths.  And I was ecstatic.  Slash ticked off.  You know, how a person gets.  So, long story short, our washer is (tentatively) back in my (skeptical) good graces.  I forgive it, but it's currently having to work hard to regain my trust.

And other than that, the rest of this week has been pretty normal.  On Wednesday, we headed to the used book sale at the library, which sucked, but we got a schedule for the upcoming sales, which seem like they "should" (HEAVY EMPHASIS) be pretty decent, so I'm crossing my fingers.  I may even have to get a babysitter for the kids so I can browse, singularly-focused and uninterrupted, the upcoming Classics sale.  (Nicholas Sparks books should probably be part of that one, right?)

Eeeeeeenywayz, that's all I've got to show for the week.  Tomorrow is October, you guys.  October.

the problem with not being Teddy Roosevelt.

I'm going to shoot you folks straight: I'm dealing with total writer's block.  Stuff is getting cray-cray around here, but not in any kind of 'oh, this would be interesting to write about' kind of way.  It's like a boring kind of crazy, if that makes sense.  So the blog has been a bit lackluster, yes?

Well, today is no exception.  I am absolutely teeming with no stories.  My cup runneth over with non-blogs.  I am a vast, churning ocean of boringness and predictability.

So, in a rousing effort to post something (mainly because I'm currently reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and I'm realizing by contrasting my life with his that I'm kind of waify in my daily achievements and ambitions, so I feel the need to do something) I thought I'd simply pop in to tell you that I'm still just as Not Teddy as always.  I do not charge up San Juan Hill.  I do not dedicate anything of significance to the National Parks, other than my vague admiration of their distant existence.  I do not read 500 books a year or initiate the terrifying prospect of personally wrestling William Taft.  I have never held the world record for Number of Hand Shakes in a Day.  And I do NOT have a blog post prepared for today.

If Teddy were running this blog, you can be certain he would have something witty and profound to say.  But that's the problem with just being the ordinary guy that has to step up to the blogging plate every week: sometimes you're just not Teddy Roosevelt.  And you have to find a way to be okay with that.

in which i dote on Lowe's.

I usually take one or two kids with me to grocery shop on Saturday mornings, and this week, I decided to also try taking the boys to one of those Build and Grow class-thingies at Lowe's.  It was Fire Boat Day.  I'll give you three guesses regarding whether the boys enjoyed themselves, and the first two don't count.

It was outrageously fun.  And honestly, stuff like this is always cause for a little pre-game anxiety, since you never know how much parent involvement/supervision/pressure will be required, and how the kids will do in an unfamiliar dynamic in public.  But it was seriously so low-key: we showed up, picked up our baggie of materials, and the boys did so great.  I didn't help Atticus with anything, and Finneas only needed a little help positioning nails before he hammered them in himself.  We will definitely be doing this again really soon.

whut's up weekly. (fall break edition.)

This school break week has been so great.  Honestly, I didn't realize I was at the point of needing a break.  I had considered just continuing on until we felt tired of school, but if there's one thing I've learned as a mom, it's that you should always - ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS - 'kill it before it dies.'  You make lunch before the kids feel hungry.  You put the kids to bed before they hit that wall of exhaustion.  You leave the swimming pool before the sunstroke-induced meltdown starts.  And you take a break from school before you're fed up.  You don't wait until a state of emergency before you take action.  You head off emergencies at the pass by killing stuff before it dies.

So that's what we did this week, and it was so great.  We filled our time with chiro appointments, visits with friends, audiobooks, Adventures in Odyssey, and growing mushrooms.

Yes, you read that correctly.  We're currently mothering some mushrooms into maturity.  I found this mushroom farm kit on clearance at our local natural food store for five bucks, so I figured it would be fun to do with the kids.  We've had a good time cultivating these little guys, making predictions about what will happen, sketching growth and changes in our nature journals, and vacillating between awe and disgust at the whole concept.

Day 1.

Day 6.  Atticus observed that this little cluster reminds him of coral.  I think it looks like button candy that got Alex Mack'd.

Day 7.  It's starting to look like something from a Dr. Seuss book.

Finneas came down with a super random fever over the weekend - he was warm and complaining of a bad headache all evening on Saturday, so I gave him an ice pack to sleep on and put him to bed, and by Sunday morning he was fine.  We stayed home from church anyway.  (I'm a strict observer of the "Fever-Free for 24 Hours" rule, just out of respect for other families who might not want to have to deal with whatever lingering germs we might be carrying.)

On Tuesday, we went to Lowe's and ordered our new dishwasher.  I found a really fancy one on super-sale, so we bit the bullet and bought it... but it's backordered for another three weeks or so.  So, I get to continue to handwash in the meantime.  You better believe that once it's installed, I will be shouting it from the rooftops and getting weirdly maternal toward my new, pretty, savior of a dishwasher.  (With bottle jets! And a hard food disposal!  And a steam-rinse setting! And a setting for kosher-observant families, whatever the heck that means.  I told you this thing was upper-crust.)

Oh, and nbd, but btw, I witnessed an actual, real-life, non-hyperbolic miracle the other day.  I have been doing my best to clean out our glass milk bottles by hand.  But without a dishwasher, I've been skeptical that they're getting totally clean, so I tried sterilizing them by rinsing them with boiling water.  After doing a few without incident, I went to sterilize the fourth bottle the same way - I put water in the bottle, covered the opening, and gave it a few good shakes to rinse the inside.  But this time, the steam built up in the bottle, shot the lid off, and sprayed boiling water all over my arms and stomach.  And it didn't burn me.  I was sopping wet from water that was hot enough to blow a lid off a bottle, and my skin wasn't even pink.  Other than the fact that God clearly could have bestowed on me a little more common sense that would have prevented me from doing this in the first place, I think it's clear that this moment should be canonized as a miracle, or however that works.

Rocco has been killing it this week: standing on his own quite often, learning to wave, melting my heart.  You know.  Here he is, chasing dust particles.  WHAT ON EARTH IS BETTER THAN A BACKLIT, PUDGY BABY HAND?!?!?! (Nothing.  Nothing.  Clearly, nothing.)