what's up weekly. (Christmas Edition!)

Merry Christmas Week, everyone!  I hope your holiday was fun and enjoyable and restful, and that everyone at your house was healthy.  We miraculously recovered from the previous week's disease just in the nick of time.  Well, mostly.

I was still feeling sick on Christmas Eve, as were Finneas and Laurelai, so after our fun breakfast (cinnamon rolls and burrito bread) I stayed home from church again with the sickies.  I slept much of the morning while they played with Oey and snuck around making last-minute presents.  I put together a cheeseboard to have ready for lunch when everyone else returned home, since there wasn't a fellowship meal after church this week and that's traditionally what we have on Christmas Eve anyway.  When the rest of the family came home, they came bearing gifts from the kids' good friend Lydia: she had crocheted them each their favorite LOTR characters!  She did such a phenomenal job and I was so impressed.  (She is the big kids' age.)

Back, from left: Aragorn, Eowyn, Goldberry
Front, from left: Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Gimli

Shelob

Is this not incredible craftsmanship?

By the evening, I knew I needed to rouse myself a bit to at least wrap Christmas jammies, which hadn't yet been done and which the kids were slated to open that evening before our Christmas Eve festivities.  I got them wrapped just in time for them to unwrap them, and then we all had a popcorn party for dinner while we watched The Nativity Story.  (Well, most of us had a popcorn party.  We'd already eaten a ton of food, and I had almost no appetite to begin with, so I passed on popcorn.)

The kids had their annual Christmas Eve slumber party, where they all pile into the boys' room to sleep.  (That's seven kids in a not-so-huge basement bedroom all night; the odor was pungent the next morning but they claim it's worth it.)

On Christmas morning, everyone was wonderfully well!  No fevers, no fatigue amongst the crew, just lots of remaining congestion.  It was so nice to get to celebrate Christmas without someone strung out on the couch for the first time in weeks.  The kids opened their stockings first thing, and then we had bagels and lox and mimosas for breakfast.  

Oey wasn't totally sure what was going on, but she was pumped about it either way.

Atticus found it hilarious that I put hot sauce in his stocking.

Oey got an Ergo for her baby and wore it most of the morning, including while she ate breakfast.

After breakfast, we headed downstairs so the kids could open their gifts to each other.  (The basement Christmas tree is surrounded only by gifts from the kids.)

Lolo got Juni a Santa because Juni LOVES Santa.

Atticus got boxing gloves for the younger boys.

After opening their gifts downstairs, they took a breather and played with some of their new things, then they opened their gifts from us.  

Callista has been asking for a bow and arrow FOREVER.

Atticus got a custom Tshirt from Todd's IG account.

And so did Todd.  So they were mostly twins, but with notable differences in their heights and beards. 

Atticus took Callista out to the field to teach her how to shoot her bow.

After all the gifts were opened, we had lunch and then we whiled away the rest of the day, resting and playing.

These boys each got a walkie talkie in his stocking, so that's basically all they've been doing for the past four days.

After kicking off the week with such a major celebration, the rest of the week has been very mild - both objectively and by comparison.  Todd has had the week off of work, so he's just been chilling.  The kids have spent the week playing with their Christmas gifts and doing jigsaw puzzles.  And other than a few household tasks that needed some attention, I've been lying low and still trying to fully recover from illness.  I took a 3.5-hour nap yesterday beginning at 10:00 a.m.  I also still have almost no appetite.  I'm clearly not totally out of the recovery stage, but I'm getting there.  And no one new has fallen ill - the three little girls seem to have skirted this round of sickness, thank goodness.

I got some canning done this week - some ham and ham bone broth from our Christmas leftovers (I think we've eaten ham six times this month alone - I may never actually be able to bring myself to open these jars, as the memory of recently eating so. much. ham. will always be too fresh.  I'm as hammed out as a person can be) and some jam from berries I put in the freezer over the summer.  It's nice to be able to wait until cold weather to can a lot of the stuff from the summer- it's so much nicer to have the canner going in the house when it's actually a blessing to fill the house with more heat and humidity.

We marked a couple of milestones this week:  Callista had her half-birthday...

...and I started in with the weekly pregnancy photos.  Gosh, I feel HUMONGOUS for only being nineteen weeks.  I don't think I've ever been this big at this point before.  

Today the plan is to go grocery shopping, do a little canning and baking, and clean the house.  We'll be doing Christmas here with my side of the family on Monday and the house is in pretty rough shape after being sick leading right up to Christmas.  So it will be nice to get everything scrubbed down and back to baseline.

And that was our week!  Next week is our last week of break before jumping back into school, so pray for me that I can finally have a decent level of energy by then so that I have some kind of progress to show for three weeks off!

what's up weekly. (Break? Week Edition.)

Hello, one and all.  You don't know it, but you're incredibly lucky to be hearing from me today, since this week has threatened to be the end of me.  I could be dead right now.  Let me explain, but first get cozy and go take some zinc so you don't catch what we've got.  Yes, I'm talking about catching it through the screen.  Take every precaution.

So, remember how I told you Atticus was sick last week? Fever and fatigue over the course of a few days.  He was the only one, and was feeling much better all day Friday, so we went ahead with Ophelia's birthday party on Saturday.  Everyone was feeling great and ready to party.

"Oey, how old are you?"  "TYOO!"

Don't let the puzzled look fool you - she knew immediately that she was supposed to try to blow out the candle.  She wasn't successful, but she gave it her best.

She liked the cake and ice cream alright, but halfway through she started begging for what she wanted most of all - "Nap? Nap?"  We had to hold her off so she could open her presents.

Feeding the baby doll she got...

...until she decided to put the bottle to better use.  It was as easy as taking, well, candy? from a baby.

How on earth is this related, you ask?  Well, Atticus also got a few gifts from family that didn't get to see him on his birthday, and rifle hooks were one of those gifts.  He asked Todd to put them up right away, and all the boys can now display their airsoft guns.

The next morning, Penelope woke up with a fever, which was a huge bummer because it was the Christmas feast at church and she was going to play piano in the talent show.  I ended up being glad I stayed home with her, because my stomach ended up being really upset.  We watched Victorian Farm Christmas (which she slept through), and then we started The Half-Blood Prince, but she was so tired she asked to turn it off so she could go to bed.  Clearly she was not well.

Then on Monday, Lolo woke up with a fever and the barfs, so the girls held down the couch all day. 

 

The next day, Penelope was up and around, though still tired, but Lolo was still sick, so Finneas joined her on the couch when he woke up feeling awful.  Lolo's fever spiked pretty high (not sure how high; I don't think I've used a thermometer since Atticus was a baby - you can just tell) and she started talking incoherently about medicine leaking all out of Santa's sleigh... super weird.  Luckily some Tylenol took the fever down and she was able to eat before bed.

The next day, Lolo and Finneas were still down, and this time Rocco joined them.  But then we ran out of room on the couch, so we had to bring a mattress up from downstairs to put on the floor so everyone had a place to go.  

Hey now.  Before you judge the Budweiser blanket.  It is the coziest, warmest throw blanket we own and everyone fights over it.

I had been feeling increasingly worn out through the week, and this was around the time that I started to feel a little at the end of my tether with everything.  So it didn't help when I woke up yesterday feeling terrible, and to top it all off, Todd woke up in the middle of the night with a raging migraine and a bunch of congestion.  And Finneas, who is always the kid who fights bugs the longest, was still sick as well.

I stopped having the energy to photograph things somewhere in there, so here is a photo of Atticus, who has been well and lively all week, sawing a board into a rifle while the rest of us wasted away.  Juni is picking up wood scraps and keeping him company.

So here we are.  I suppose I can say we are through our first week of break, but it begs the question: "break, by what standard?"  It has been exhausting and increasingly overwhelming as the week has gone on.  I did start shooting the big guns at myself yesterday - I got on the treadmill to try to cook out the fever, then I started nebulizing saline and drinking fire cider and taking homeopathics.  It's hard to know if it's actually working or not, since this bug seems to kind of come and go and come and go, but it was weird - the first ten minutes or so I was on the treadmill, I felt like I was dying.  My sinuses were burning, my throat was burning, I couldn't breathe.  And then all of a sudden my sinuses started releasing everything (which was a lot), and I got a second wind, and I have been feeling so much better since then.  The nebulizing seems to be working the stuff out of my chest, and the fire cider is helping my throat.  Hopefully, this is a genuine turnaround and not just a trick, but we'll see.  I am cautiously optimistic.

So, anyway.  All that to say, the week ended up looking very different than I'd hoped.  I had wanted to clean and organize the basement and get a jumpstart on Christmas cooking.  Instead, I have posted way too many stories on Instagram and finished reading an entire book, and most of a second one.  I guess that will make my end-of-year book list look a little less anemic, which is good because this has been a pretty dismal year, reading-wise.  So silver linings for sure.  But gosh - I'm hoping next week everyone is healthy!  (Pray for us - the little girls haven't gotten it yet, and I feel like I need to be bracing myself.)

So today is... today.  I'm not sure what it will hold.  Maybe some Christmas food and present prep if I feel well and if the kids don't need me.  More of the same if I don't, or they do.  Lord, beer me the strength.

what's up weekly. (advent edition.)

Well, it is now December, and we've hit the ground running! I wasn't around last week because I was at church, helping to decorate and cook in preparation for a brunch we had last Saturday.  Dr. James White joined us for a Psalm Sing on Friday night, and then joined us again Saturday morning for food and a teaching on the topic of Christmas.  

Right after the brunch, we headed out for home because Atticus was having some friends come over to celebrate his birthday and we needed to get pizza in the oven.  It was his first "friends" party, and it was a blast.  Everyone played Voorst Ball and ate pizza and had a grand old time.  

I can't believe he is fifteen.  I have a fifteen year old son.  What a weird thing to grapple with, mentally.  And what's even weirder is that he is a complete and total delight.  Everyone talks about how hard the teenage years are, but we just must not have gotten to the hard part yet because I love this stage.  He is funny, witty, thoughtful, kind, interesting.  He is a hard worker.  He is respectful, and respected by the people who know him.  He has great friends, keeps up with his school work, plays with his younger siblings.  (Oey tries calling him "Ad" like we do, but it ends up coming out as "Dad," and it's adorable.  She comes up to him and puts her arms up for him to cuddle her, saying, "Dad! Dad!"  She asked him to put a barrette in the other day and it was so cute watching him try to figure out how to do her hair.)  There just isn't a part of his current stage of life that isn't enjoyable.

We have spent the rest of our December so far (how is it half over already?!) doing Adventy things.  We kicked off our celebrations with a screening of Muppets Christmas Carol.  Well, everyone else screened Muppets Christmas Carol.  I fell asleep pretty early on and slept through the whole thing.  This pregnancy has been no joke - I can't keep my eyes open if I sit still too long without something to be doing.  Movies, audiobooks, Story Club read-alouds, the episodes of Frasier Todd and I have been watching before bed - it's all fodder for the nap mill.  I was sad to miss the Muppets (and then Home Alone earlier this week) but it can't be helped.

There I am on the far left, completely unresponsive.  It's bordering on a medical concern.

Continuing in our documentation of Advent happenings, St. Nicholas visited us on December 6 and brought us a haul of goodies.  Dutch chocolate, marzipan, letters, cookies, and chocolate coins.  He also brought oranges, but I don't think those were Dutch-made.

We buckled down and stayed focused, and got our schoolwork done so we could start Christmas break a little early this week.  All we have to finish up (and nap to) today is another installment of Jim Dale's Peter Pan.  It has been a slight challenge because Atticus has been really under the weather the last few days, so he's needed to take things slowly, but it all got done and we are about to be officially on break for three weeks!

We gathered in the bathroom to better see our star maps.

There is a plague going around the church, and Atticus seems to be the only one to have caught it.  It's not too bad, he's just really tired and has a fever that comes and goes.

The big kids decided to do some school outside so that Atticus could get some fresh air.  I love having a deck.

The Elephant in the Room is big and beautiful and also dead as a doornail.  There are needles ALL OVER THE PLACE, and because it's such a huge tree, there are so many needles falling every day.  I will be lucky to limp this guy past the finish line of Christmas morning; I have pretty low hopes of nursing it all the way through Epiphany.  We shall see what happens.

And that brings us to today.  It's Ophelia's birthday today!

She is such a funny thing.  She tags along with the big kids like she belongs right there in their midst.  She loves participating in church, saying "Amen!" along with the congregation and singing along during hymns.  Every book she finds is a hymnal, and she carries it around the house, singing.  Her favorite thing lately is to carry around some toy or doll (anything works), bouncing and patting it and saying, "Shh shh shh shh shh."  She refuses to sleep with a pillow and still sucks on her sheet while she sleeps, and she gets really mad when I change the sheets because her "nap" (smelly, spitty spot) is then gone and she has to make a new one.  She LOVES sleeping and still sleeps a ton - her afternoon nap is typically 4-5 hours!  She goes to bed early, wakes up late, and gets excited and runs straight to her room when I tell her it's time for bed.  She tells me she needs a diaper change by simply saying, "GWOSS. GWOSS."  She is the snuggliest little Christmas elf and we are so happy to celebrate her birthday!  Tomorrow we'll have a party here with my parents.

And that is our busy, full, fun first half of December.  I still have a little Christmas shopping to do, which I hate - I usually try to have everything done in November to leave December open just for partying, but I wasn't feeling well all through November so I have to do it now.  And I'm coming down to the wire and still need to iron out a few ideas! Gah!  I'm going to brave Walmart this morning (yet another thing I try to avoid in December) to see if I can get any last minute inspiration.  Wish me the best of luck, and it was nice knowing you if I don't make it out alive.

what's up weekly. (In which I share some NEWS!, and then some other news.)

Hey kids, it's me! I bet you thought that I was dead!  (Name the movie and finish the lyric!)

But while I didn't fall over and break my leg or get a hemorrhage in my head, I do have a valid excuse:  I have spent most of the last three weeks on hold with Customer Service at Shark, and the remainder of the time I've been pregnant.

YES! You read that right, and this is a weird way to announce it, but one of the reasons I've been incommunicado lately is because I don't have much energy after lying around on the couch like a sack of potatoes, and also trying to find someone at Shark Industries who understands both vacuum problems and English.  It's been a trying time.

I'm sixteen weeks now (due May 22), and starting to feel better most of the time.  This really hasn't been a bad pregnancy compared to the others - minimal barfing (though, being pregnant at the age of 37 after having had eight previous babies, barfing also involves peeing my pants, so it's less frequent but more complicated this time around), and a bit more ability to function on a basic level.  I have been really tired and was basically narcoleptic for a while, was more prone to carsickness than I've ever been, and I could NOT NOT NOT stand the smell of other people's breath.  I was able to keep down certain foods like jalapeno poppers, fish sticks and Wendy's breaded chicken sandwiches.  I have NOT been able to keep down chocolate, beef, tomatoes, or wine. I was drinking about 2 quarts of raw milk a day for a while, and as milk weighs eight pounds per gallon and I didn't seem to be burning any of it off, you can imagine I've packed on much more weight, much more quickly than usual.

Many afternoons early on involved cancelling school so I could do this.

But like I said, I'm finally starting to feel normal.  After a long stretch of not being able to stomach meat, I suddenly craved a steak, ate it (and then a subsequent one the next day), and have felt a million times better ever since.  My stomach is still a little sensitive but it's manageable, and I would like to highlight the fact that I haven't had Wendy's in nearly two weeks.  I felt the baby move for the first time this past week, which is always reassuring once I stop feeling sick - it's nice to have an indication that things are still going well.

SO. Anyway.  That's been the major news around here.  We just started telling people last weekend.  The kids were all so thrilled (the big kids had suspected; Penelope said, "I knew it! You were so grouchy for so long!"), and Laurelai specifically is very excited that we'll be having another homebirth. I still haven't found a midwife or established care anywhere, but I've at least started gathering references.

Okay, let me move along to other news.  A couple of weekends ago, the weather was gorgeous and a friend of ours from church had people out to help them harvest some of their crops.  They're growing meat birds and eggs for folks at church, and are looking to expand their operation to pork and milk cows soon.  (You may remember when I told you about going out there to butcher meat chickens a few months ago.)  To keep feed costs down, and therefore everyone's meat costs, they're growing a lot of their own feed, but they needed help bringing it in and threshing it.  So we headed out there for the day.

Here, we're working on removing sunflower seeds from the dried flower heads.

Then the kids put them through this blower system to get rid of the chaff.  Juni was such a hard, cheerful worker.  She stayed at her post all morning, scooping cleaned seeds into a bucket.

Penelope oversaw the winnowing operation.  She also worked really hard and stayed super diligent.

I only have photos of the girls.  The boys were out in the field helping to harvest the sunflowers, milo and corn.

The next week was the week of Thanksgiving and we were on break, AND I was finally starting to feel good again, so I took the first few days to tackle the hovel I had allowed our house to become.  I washed every wall, every door, all the big windows (on the inside; I did not climb a huge ladder while pregnant), all the baseboards, all the floors.  I washed all the bedding, all the couch linens.  I cleaned the cabinets.  We raked the yard.  I got completely caught up on laundry.  (In fact, I did so much cleaning all of a sudden that the city contacted us to tell us we must have a water leak.)  It was marvelous. And do you know, that all only took two days.  This house is so incredibly easy to clean - I'm pretty sure the person who chose all the finishes planned on retiring and growing old in this house, and everything is so low maintenance.  I just kept thanking God while I cleaned for what a good house he brought us.

Unfortunately, while I was vacuuming the basement, my vacuum died yet again.  This stupid piece of crap has been giving me hell since I bought it a year ago.  I had already called customer service once, so I called again.  This time, they told me they'd send a replacement in 3-5 business days, but I would have to destroy my current vacuum before they'd send it.  On video call (for proof), I severed the power cord.  One week later, I got an email that the new vacuum was cancelled.  So then I sat for half an hour waiting on customer service again, and finally got another one shipped, but this time it will take up to ten business days to arrive.  Which means I will likely be out a vacuum for nearly a month... and there are pine needles EVERYWHERE because we have not one, but two live trees in my house at this moment.

Here I am, trying fruitlessly to sweep pine needles out of my carpet with a broom.

Yes, we went and got our trees.  First, we went to Home Depot the day before Thanksgiving so I could buy more wall cleaner and just happened to look at the trees.  My goodness, they were so fresh and beautiful - I normally don't buy them until a week or two after Thanksgiving, but apparently I've been missing out.  So we bought our basement tree that day.  Then over the weekend, we went to a local tree farm to find our big tree for the living room.

Atticus, sawing the bottom of the Home Depot tree.

IT IS A BEAST.

It's eleven feet tall, which is what I wanted.  That part didn't surprise me.  But I didn't realize just how WIDE it was when we saw it out there - out of context, next to other trees, it's hard to really gauge size.  My first clue that it was perhaps a mite large was when the employee kept making comments about how this is, like, a really big tree.  My next clue was when seven people had to work together to get it to fit through the netting ring.  My next clue was when it got wedged in the van as we were trying to get it in there and we couldn't get the back door closed.  The final clue was when we actually got it inside and unnetted and were like, this is, like, a really big tree.

SO. MUCH. SHOVING. was happening here.

Juni found Santa!  Juni LOVES Santa, which is funny because we don't do Santa at our house and she knows he isn't real, but that doesn't stop her from expressing unadulterated joy anytime she sees him.

But no matter!  The kids have like 700 billion and a trillion 300 million ornaments, so it was the perfect size in the end.

The kids named it Tree Beard, but I secretly call it The Elephant In the Room.

And I suppose the only other major news I need to report on is Thanksgiving itself.  We went up to Iowa and had dinner at my sister and brother-in-law's studio, where there was enough room for all of us.  My grandpa was there, and my parents, and my sister's family, and us - eighteen people in all.  It was a perfect space for it.

Some coloring of pictures, some picking of noses.

Lolo made her classic salad.

And Penelope made her famous cranberry sauce, served in my great grandmother's crystal.

Atticus, the baby whisperer.

 I don't know what I'm so animated about here.  Probably about how electric car batteries are produced by child slaves.  Or about permissible Christian burial practices.  Or about how taxation is immoral.  I'm that Thanksgiving guest.

Everyone seems to be having a good time in spite of my mouthy presence, so that's good.

Four generations in one photo!

The next morning, the kids did a little crafting with my mom, and we headed home in the afternoon.  And of course, once we got home, the house was somehow trashed again already, even though I had just cleaned it and we weren't even home.  How does this happen?!  Well, oh well.  I'm glad for good, productive work to keep me busy, and for the energy to actually do it.

Today I will be grocery shopping for the first time in five weeks, and hopefully starting to get some Christmas presents ordered, so wish me luck - I have a full day ahead!