what's up weekly. (there's a lactraitor in our midst.)

Oh gravy.  This week has been a wild ride.  Just grab yourself a cup of coffee, settle in, and get ready to hear about how my boob tried to kill me.

Last Saturday, Finneas had some friends over for pizza and hanging out, to celebrate his upcoming birthday.  (He's not the boob who tried to kill me; I'm getting there.  Just let me cook.)  There was a specific moment when I was standing there talking to one of his friends when I suddenly thought, "I do not feel good," but there wasn't much I could do about it at the moment.  The friends went home, I made Sabbath dinner, and I felt like I was getting a cold but not much more.

But by the evening, I had a headache and was feeling less well, so I made the decision to keep the babies and Oey home with me from church the next day, which was good because I woke up with a low fever and I felt like crap.  And the cherry on top was that I had developed a clogged duct overnight, so I even woke up early to pump because it was starting to get uncomfortable.  Through the day, I continued to feel unwell and headachey, but I mostly just felt like I was getting the recurrent chest gunk I've been fighting with all winter. 

By Monday morning, I was pretty sure I had influenza.  I was achey and headachey and had spiked a really high fever - it was up to 105 at one point, and even with Tylenol I was only able to get it down to 103.  I could barely get out of bed or off the couch.  I slept on and off most of the day, and other than feeding the babies and then laying them down for naps, I asked the big kids to watch them because I was so sick.  I couldn't get myself in and out of the tub or shower without my temperature spiking painfully.  I barely was able to eat or drink anything and I puked a couple of times.  I had texted my midwife to ask what I could take for the fever, and she said it didn't sound like mastitis, even though the clogged duct was getting more painful, because with mastitis, fevers don't typically go that high and you don't barf.

But by Tuesday, my fever was still just as high and I was sweating profusely all day.  I was able to smell infection coming out of my pores on my left side, and the mastitis swelling and rash had started.  By the afternoon I was puking up everything I swallowed.  My milk supply seemed totally drained by the fact that I hadn't had much to eat or drink for two days, and everything I did consume came back up.  The babies weren't eating and were crying.  It was all so much.  So Todd ran out and picked up some antibiotics from a nurse friend of ours.

By the time we went to bed that night, just a few hours after taking the first pill, my fever had broken, the pain started to ease off a little, and I had stopped puking.  I woke up at 4:00 a.m., hungry and able to eat for the first time in days.  I chugged a whole quart of water and stood in front of the fridge in the dark, eating cold rotisserie chicken like someone in an ad for depression meds.

By Wednesday morning, I was feeling so much better, I half-jokingly asked Todd if I could just take all the antibiotic pills at once because they made me feel so good.  He half-jokingly compared me to Johnny Cash and said "they make me feel good" is the reason everyone gives for taking too many handfuls of prescription meds.  So we came to the mutual agreement that I'll only take them as prescribed.

Anyway, by yesterday I was still on the mend.  The thrill of feeling better has worn off a bit and I'm feeling tired and still very sore and in pain, though that's improving.  My main concern is getting my milk supply back up for the babies.  Eulalie willingly takes a bottle, but I'm running low on stored breastmilk to give her, and Knox won't even take a bottle.  So it's been a challenging couple of days.  I've tried to increase their table foods, but Knox seems to have food sensitivities, and I'm afraid of giving him the wrong thing or too much of something, which would cause him to vomit and end up emptier than he was before.  Eulalie tolerates cow's milk, but too much gives her a rash, and even a little bit makes Knox puke.  I think I'm going to ask our milk farmer for some goat milk this week and give that a try, but again... risking new things with Knox makes me nervous, and also, I don't even know if I could get him to drink it because again, he doesn't take a bottle. 

I really just need my supply to come back up, but I worry that won't happen.  Prayers would be appreciated.

OKAY.  Now, on to better, less boob-centric, news.

1.  Todd started Academia Latina with the younger crew a couple weekends ago.  He had taught the older two kids the introductory levels back when we lived in Columbia, and they've continued to self-instruct since then.  But it was time for Finneas and Laurelai to jump in, and Rocco was capable of joining them... and then since Todd was already right there teaching, the younger girls decided to join in... and thus was born The Academia.

The little girls paying close attention in class.

2.  Eulalie can now sit.  Yes, that is late.  Yes, I know it's kind of weird she can crawl but she couldn't sit yet.  But anyway, we're all squared away now.

Pretty girl.

3. Laurelai had her half birthday.

4.  AND FINNEAS TURNED THIRTEEN!

To be honest, I'm a little surprised he survived this long.  Or not at all surprised.  One or the other.  

He is quick-witted and funny.  He's competitive.  He's charismatic and always has a little gaggle of followers.  He's diligent at his schoolwork and values doing well.

He told me once that he wanted to get in a fight sometime, just so he could get the chance to feel what it felt like to punch a bully in the face.  When I said that it meant he'd probably get punched in the face, too, he simply shrugged and said, "Oh, that doesn't scare me."  While I think it shows he's still young and a bit naive, it also shows something more deeply true about him: he's genuinely not afraid of things that I assume people must be afraid of.  He's brave in ways I don't fully understand.  He doesn't go along with the crowd, and often gets the crowd to follow him instead.

He's loyal and committed, and he and Rocco have such a tight, unique bond.  He is tenderhearted with the babies and loves helping to dress and hold them.  

As Todd wrote here, it seems like God has singled him out for special work.  I'm excited to see what that is.

The kids dressed up Knox like the Stars and Stripes.  (Or, really, I dressed him like the Stripes, and then the kids got the idea to top him off with the Stars.)

Well, there's the news.  Today, Todd and the boys will be off butchering a hog, and the girls and I have some house cleaning to tackle, so it looks like a great start to a great weekend.  Hope you have a good one, too!

what's up weekly: Valentine's Day is obviously all I care about.

Hi folks!  Brace yourself: I'm about to just absolutely slam you with Valentine's Day details.  Are you ready?

Todd took me out to dinner the night before (I hate crowds and would rather rip out my own fingernails than be caught dead at a restaurant on Valentine's Day, so it was perfect to go the night before when things were comparatively dead).  We went to a local place that makes the best fried mushrooms and smoked rib tacos, and they sent us home with to-go cups of Diet Coke and it was just the best.  We stopped at Walmart on the way home to get some flowers and decor for the next day's celebration.  (And also Pringles, because one time when we went out we brought home some Pringles for the kids to reward them for doing a good job, and now Juni thinks date nights = Pringles nights.  So I guess we're doing that now.)

After the kids went to bed, I decorated for the morning and wrapped presents.  We don't go huge or anything, but I have enjoyed making our Valentine's celebration a little bigger and a little prettier each year.  I love getting to do something special for the kids to celebrate how much we love them, and I also love that it has become a bright, sunny spot in the middle of February.  We decorate, we get each of the kids a small gift, we make waffles (or, this year, pancakes) with whipped cream and chocolate syrup and sprinkles for breakfast.  Like I said, not huge, but special.

My fatal flaw is that I refuse to iron tablecloths.

The younger girls got Best Friends necklaces and bracelets...

...for obvious reasons.

They younger boys got accessories for their WWE ring.

Lolo got a jean jacket she has been dyyyyyyyying for.

Penelope got a bookshelf and tiny books for her dollhouse.

Atticus got a Metallica CD.

And Oey got a new princess dress.

Ope, things are getting intense over here in the arena.

Later in the morning, each of the boys gave each of the girls a rose, and because even the babies got in on the festivities, we needed three dozen roses to have enought!

The boys handing me the roses they picked out specially for me:

After lunch, the girls had some friends from church come join them for an afternoon of baking.  They made brownies for the Psalm Sing later that evening.  Their mom, Brooke, is a good friend and an esthetician and she kindly waxed Penelope's eyebrows for the first time.  (Hey.  I am a millennial and I have seen my share of badly done eyebrows, some of which were my own.  We weren't leaving this first foray into facial grooming up to amateurs.)

That evening, instead of doing a cheeseboard like we normally do on Valentine's Day, Todd and some of the kids went to the Psalm Sing, and I kept some of the others at home.  The Psalm Sing was being held out of town at a church we'd never been to before, and since I needed to stay home with the babies anyway, I kept Oey, Juni and Callista with me so Todd didn't have the youngest ones to keep track of in a new place.  Penelope also wanted to stay home, so she joined us as well.  We had pizza for dinner, popped some popcorn, and watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets while we waited for everyone else to come home.

The next morning, I woke up kind of congested and worn out, so I didn't really leverage my Saturday the way I should have.  I just kind of laid around and read books all day, which was both delightful and exhausting.  In the evening, we had our Valentine's Day cheeseboard for Sabbath dinner, which was so nice because I didn't have to cook anything.  Such a lowkey weekend.

On Tuesday, the twins turned nine months old - NINE MONTHS.

It's Pork and Beans!

They are just wild lately.  Since recovering from being sick in January, it's like they've been trying to make up for lost time by hitting all kinds of milestones at once.  Since their eight-month update, Eulalie is now waving, crawling, sitting up, cutting lots of new teeth, and even saying 'hi' (I swear... I think).  Knox is playing peekaboo and growing the longest, funniest hair by his ears.  

He looks like he thinks she's hilarious.  In reality, they don't really seem to pay all that much deliberate attention to one another yet, other than the cutest cutey cute habit that Beans has of turning around and looking for Knox whenever she's laid down for nap.  She wants to see if he's in his bed.  And then, without fail, over the course of naptime she will wiggle to the other end of her bed so she can be closer to him.

Their personalities summed up in one concise photo.

Is that not just the butteriest biscuit you ever did see?

They're still in 0-3 month clothing (Eulalie is 12 lb, 13 oz, Knox is a whopping 12 lb, 15 oz), and they're still taking three naps a day, so in some ways they still seem so little.  But things do seem to be getting easier - I recently dropped their nightly baths, since it created so much chaos during dinner time, and now the evenings feel significantly more manageable.  Nursing is still going well, and we're playing around with solids.  I gave the babies eggs this past week, and Knox did not tolerate them well - he was barfing everywhere for a few hours afterwards (not spit up, actual real puke) and I even had to nurse him in the bathtub so I could rinse him off when he'd barf while eating.  But once the egg was out of his system, he was totally fine again.  He reacted similarly when I tried giving him dairy a while back, so I think his tummy just isn't ready for those things, though Lalie doesn't seem to have any issue.

Anyways.  We sure do love these babykins.

Beans is on the move, on the move, alleluia!  Beans is on the move in many tiny ways.

Juni LOVES holding the babies.

Now that Eulalie can crawl, she loves going over to the spot on the floor where the fireplace key inserts and stealing the metal guard.  Here she is chewing on this most precious of treasures.

And speaking of girls who love babies, Callista has been in the parenting zone this week.  Todd came upstairs the other day to find her "nursing" Strongdor (her special doll), and when he asked her if she was nursing, she shrugged and said, "Yeah, and I pumped earlier."

Here is a photo of Strongdor joining us at the table, with her own miniscule pancake on her own miniscule plate.

And that was our week!

,what's up weekly: on the mend.

via GIPHY

NOPE, SUCKERS.  You can't get rid of me that easily.

I mean, you could.  You almost did.  But I made it.  Or anyway, I will make it.  Probably.

We are not still in our death throes, so that's positive news!  Most of the kids seem to be all the way through the sickness we've been fighting with for eons, though it does seem like each day there's still at least one kiddo who is battling a headache or a low-grade fever, or whose eyes look sunken and whose color just isn't right.  Eulalie is still pouring snot, I still have a cough, Knox's color seems strange sometimes.  BUT.  I really do think we're starting to crest the hill.

Nebulizing albuterol with Knox, since his cough has lingered and his color is sometimes off.  But the albuterol was giving him nosebleeds, so we switched to a hydrogen peroxide/saline solution.

Knox and Eulalie both made big milestone leaps this week: Eulalie is now crawling short distances, and Knox is now sitting completely independently.  

They seem happy to be on the mend!

The boys gave him a Ray Mysterio action figure to play with and he seems pretty pumped.  Someone needs to tell him that biting isn't allowed in wrestling.

We have buckled down at our schoolwork and tried to make up for lost time.  Though we missed two weeks of school, I think on paper we're only one week behind on our actual work at this point, so that is encouraging.  I really, really hate it when the end of the school year runs too far into May, so hopefully we can make up that other week soon so we don't have to adjust our end-of-the-year plans.

They turned the living room into a whole little house.

As for me, I'm happy to be through it and the exhaustion is catching up with me.  I ran all our bedding through a hot water wash this week, and my pillow absolutely disintegrated, and I was worried I'd have a hard time sleeping on the new one.  But, no.  I slept like the dead.  My body is still playing catch-up.

Todd maintained his sweet tradition of buying me flowers before February starts so I have something sunny and pretty to look at during the longest month of the year.

I wished for a boring week, and I mostly got it.  I found Legally Blonde on Prime, so that was a nice change of pace from watching Anthony Bourdain while I walk on the treadmill.  I washed all our bedding and pillows so Clean Sheets Day was extra luxurious.  I planned out today's grocery shopping trip.  I actually left the house three times this week to run little errands.  Nothing major, but that's the point - thank the Lord for a boring week!  Now I'm just hoping the last bits of this virus resolve themselves and we can finally turn the page on this chapter of sickness.