what's up weekly.

Last Friday, a friend from church came over to teach Penelope how to hand piece quilt squares.  Penelope has wanted to learn to sew for some time, and it was so great that Sue decided to take her under her wing and share her skills.  So the ladies hunkered down in the sunniest spot in the house (the basement.  The sunniest part of our house is the basement).  I stayed upstairs because the piano tuner was here.

Oh, yeah.  Our piano got tuned.  Maybe it's not major news to you guys, but it's major news to this mom who gets to listen every day to the plinky plonking of young pianists, hard at work.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow, it is now far better than it was.  (It was extremely flat when our tuner first began working on it, and each time he comes he's been raising it bit by bit.  It's a long process, but we're nearly there!)

On Saturday, we headed up to Iowa for the first time since Juniper was born.  It wasn't to see family, though, as one might suspect.  An amazing college gal that I discipled for a while was getting married in Newton, and I didn't want to miss it.

We hopped in the van at 10 a.m. to get there by 3 p.m., and we arrived just in time.  (I may have changed into my dress in the van once we arrived, ten minutes before the ceremony.)  I fed Juniper, and then took the two big girls to the wedding while Todd occupied the other five in the grassy field by the cars.

We hopped back in the car afterward, grabbed some dinner, and hit the road.  Because we had to factor in stops for breastfeeding, gas and food, we didn't make it home until 10:30 that night.  It made for a really long day, but I'm so glad we were able to go, and all things considered - seven kids, breastfeeding newborn, full day of driving - it actually went really smoothly.

Because everyone was so exhausted - most notably, Juniper, who slept for six and a half hours straight once we got home Saturday night - we stayed home from church on Sunday to rest.  I'm looking forward to a more 'normal' weekend routine returning soon.  I've really missed being at church regularly.

Monday and Tuesday were really run-of-the-mill days, just like I like them.  We're still plugging away at school, but we still have plenty of hours during the day to enjoy the beautiful weather.  I don't take this season lightly - it will get outrageously hot down here really soon, and we'll have many more inside hours to occupy each day.

The kids spent some of their outside time organizing a 'sculpture play,' a kind of living art display.  Penelope was the Statue of Liberty,  Finneas was The David, and Laurelai was the Mona Lisa.  (If you look closely, you will see that each 'statue' is labeled with its name and its creator.  The Statue of Liberty is attributed to "the French," Global.)

I find it to be an absolute work of genius that she sat behind this playhouse window to indicate she was a painting.

This handsome devil turned ten-and-a-half this week.

I could go on and on about him, but let me just summarize him with these two concise points: first, he requested a celebration for D-Day yesterday, so we spent much of the evening watching ABC News clips about the 75-year anniversary return of American veterans to Normandy.  Second, Callista was fussing for more chicken strips in the car on the way home from the wedding, and though she'd already had about a million of them, and though Atticus was still hungry, he gave her his last one.  When asked why, he simply said, "Well, I thought she'd really like it."  And that is Atticus in a nutshell.

And just a few more items of note from the week: Atticus had an orthodontist appointment in Kansas City, so Todd took the day off to drive him.  They ran to Ikea for me while they were there, and I am now the proud owner of TWO Billy bookcases (and ONE Billy height extender - we got the last one in stock.  If you're headed to Ikea anytime soon and want to grab me another one, I'd be eternally grateful).  I'm so excited to get them installed and dolled up.  I have big plans.

Also, the big kids are really getting into Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.  Hilariously, Atticus is the one loving Nancy Drew, and Penelope is really into the Hardy Boys.  Don't try to entice them away from their preferred series.  They are staunchly set in their ways.

And lastly, IT'S SUMMAH-SUMMAH-SUMMAHTIME, Y'ALL!

mes'morial day.

Last week we celebrated Memorial Day in our usual fashion: it's the one day of summer that I actually allow the kids to make s'mores.  Call me a mean mom, but I just can't handle that level of melted chocolate and marshmallow goo multiplied across a million kids more than once a year.  I just can't.  So we make a huge go of it on Memorial Day, let the kids go nuts, and then wait until the next Memorial Day to do it again.  It works for us.

This year we changed things up a bit, though.  Todd had gathered all our cookout supplies beforehand, but we got a text from our Connection Group that an impromptu gathering was being organized for that evening.  So we took everything over to Josiah and Meghan's house for a barbecue.

You might remember Josiah as the friend who took Atticus out for 'military training' - and, as a result, Atticus refers to Josiah as his 'B.F.F.a.E.': "Best Friend Forever and Ever."  They also have dogs, so now the dogs are Penelope's B.F.F.a.E.'s.  Lissy was totally nonchalant around the dogs, too, even though they were taller than she is.

S'mores are tastier when you eat them with friends.

Rocco's favorite part of the evening involved running/rolling/falling down the hill.  He was seriously so uncoordinated the entire night.  (Meghan later sent me a video of Rocco in which he accidentally fell down four times in less than two minutes.)

 via GIPHY

When we were getting ready to leave, I - for the first time ever - actually forgot a kid.  I swore I'd never be That Mom, but I was rounding up all the sticky, sweaty, hyped-up kids and walked off without Juniper's car seat (with her inside it).  Todd was loading everyone into the van and was like, "Uh, where did you put Juniper?" and I was like, "Uh, she's still over there next to everyone in the yard..."  Awesome.  Give me a medal.

And that's how I ended Memorial Day on a high note.

juniper's first bath at home.

So I'm super late in getting these photos posted, but better late than never because she's SO CUTE I COULD DIE!  (Also, how is she already so much bigger than she was when these photos were taken three weeks ago?  How do the newborn days go so quickly?  Give me my tiny-fat baby back, Lord!)

With my last few babies, I've delayed baths after birth, because that vernix is so good and protective for their skin.  Plus, I've noticed a weird phenomenon where babies get dirtier if they're bathed more often.  They're greasier and smellier and their skin gets dry.  But if you just leave them alone, it seems like tiny skin roombas just buzz around on a microscopic level, sucking up all the grossness.  The trick is allowing it to get bad enough first that the roombas kick in, so there's a definite period of, "Oh my word, this baby is so dirty."  But after that, other than needing to spot-clean their necks and butts, babies just don't need a ton of baths.

LOOK AT ALL THAT CHUNKY BABY RIGHT THERE OHMYWORRRRRD.

All that to say, I would have preferred to wait longer to give her her first bath, but we ended up bathing her at the hospital because her vernix was so thick and cheesy.  Sick.  Once home, I washed her hair a few times because newborn hair gets gross fast.  But I waited a few weeks for her first full-on bath.  So she's not quite five weeks old in these photos.

Look how much pretty hair she has!  Pray with me that it doesn't end up falling out.

How do these days pass so quickly?  I seriously just want to gobble up every single second and never forget a minute of it.  And how is it possible that I have come to appreciate these moments more and more with each one, rather than less?  What profound blessings these little milestones are.

the girls got haircuts...

...and it was about freaking time.

Todd cuts the boys' hair at home with clippers, and does an amazing job.  But one thing I'm adamant about is getting the girls 'real' haircuts from 'real' professionals.  On principle, I don't cut their hair myself other than minor trims.  It's just one of my 'things' and I feel really strongly about it.

The problem is, kids' haircuts cost money and require allocated time, neither of which do I have in excessive quantities.  So I've been putting it off.  Penelope hasn't had her hair cut since we lived in Cedar Falls, and other than occasionally trimming up Laurelai's scalplock (she has this one chunk of hair on the crown of her head that grows a lot faster than the rest of her hair), Laurelai has never had a real haircut.  Penelope's hair grows really slowly, so that wasn't an issue, but her ends were a bit split, and I was hoping a trim might keep them from breaking off, thereby helping her hair grow a little faster.

I asked my stylist how much she charges for kids' cuts, and she said $30, and I did the math on having four daughters, and then had an aneurysm and died.  Then I came back to life and remembered I have a friend who's a stylist, and she might be a bit more affordable.

When I texted her, she responded that her prices were not only significantly lower than that, but that she could also come to my house and cut their hair here.  I didn't have to find a sitter for the other kids.  I didn't have to work an appointment around naptimes and breastfeeding schedules.  I didn't have to put on real pants.  OKAY!

It was amazing.  She knew how to dry cut the girls' curls to keep their curl pattern and avoid 'mushroom head' - the emotional pain of which only curly girls can really understand.  Her little boy played with the kids while she worked and we chatted.  Cottage industry at its finest.

I know it's a small thing, but I really think this was an intentional gift from God to us.  He has been so faithful lately to place people in our lives that meet real needs from within the context of our community.

Of course, I forgot to get official 'after' pictures.  Sigh.  Oh well.  Just pay attention to photos in subsequent posts, I guess, and take my word that the girls' new cuts look beautiful.

what's up tri-weekly.

Oh, hello!  It's been a while, no?  I have SO much to tell you about what's been going on lately - way too much for a single post.  So today I'll do a fly-over of the last three weeks, but I'm hoping to be more regular around here from now on, so I'll get to the rest of it later.

Let's start with Mother's Day!  First of all, Juniper gave me a five-hour stretch of sleep, which was the first she'd done that since she had jaundice, and she hasn't done it again since.  I like to believe she knew it was Mother's Day, and it was an intentional gift.  I was still under self-imposed quarantine after having her (which was incredible, and I will never live the postpartum lifestyle any other way again, and I'll tell you more about it soon), so I stayed home from church.  Todd took the big kids, so Juniper and I just hung out in the quiet, cuddling, and I got some Bible reading in.  Best Mother's Day ever.

I've been sorting and purging all our kids' clothes.  The bins have been taking over all our storage space, and now that I have pantry shelving in my laundry room, there is even less room for them.  So I've been trying to set aside time when I can pare down what we're keeping, and putting everything in vacuum-seal bags, one bag per size.  I can fit three bags inside a bin, so I should have significantly fewer bins to store at the end of it all, but let me tell you, it's a job.  My house looks like a clothes-and-Sterilite store exploded.  It's bad.

Juniper turned one month old since the last time I posted!  (She's actually almost seven weeks old at this point, so I'm clearly overdue for this news.)  At the time she turned a month, she was starting to focus her eyes, was still miraculously in newborn-sized clothing, and still spent most of her days sleeping on the couch next to me.  Her days and nights were still pretty scrambled, and we spent many overnight hours cuddling on the couch and watching Friends together.

I've been getting used to The Kraken.  After my failed effort to Parking Lot many moons ago, I've been too intimidated to get behind the wheel again.  Once I was ready to get out of the house again, we would run errands as a family, and Todd would drive me everywhere.  It was a pretty sweet chauffer setup, but it's not exactly a sustainable method.  Last Wednesday, I got behind the wheel myself for the first time since the accident, and we headed up to the Amish.  I didn't cause any pileups on the highway or anything, so I'm feeling better about my driving skills.

The weather has been beautiful, and the kids have spent the majority of their free time in our yard, hunting toads, slugs, and blue-tailed skinks.  They haven't yet caught a skink, though it's not for lack of trying - even though the kids camp out in front of known skink residences, those things are fast.  The toads, however, are less fortunate.

Atticus built a 'museum' in the backyard.

We also got our summer garden in this week.  We'd gotten in some cooler weather crops last month, but our hot weather stuff went in on Wednesday.  In an effort to keep Finneas from digging in the dirt of our new bucket gardens, I let him put some dirt and green bean seeds in a little tub of his own. 

We did have a few rainy days in there, so one Saturday afternoon recently, I let the big kids watch the first Harry Potter movie with me while the little kids were napping.  It was so fun.

Juniper turned six weeks on Memorial day, so I'm beginning daytime sleep training with her.  She is getting big enough to be disturbed and kept awake by the chaos around her, so she's been napping in the pack and play in our room.  It's going really well, and she's catching on really quickly, but I miss having her next to me on the couch all day!  

Yesterday was Ascension Day, so we feasted it up like we normally do, with wine and a charcuterie board.  The kids and I had also baked cookies earlier in the day, which is an enormous feat for me.  Baking with the kids is always really stressful, but we did it!  And we were really glad to have something fresh and yummy to offer when a couple of friends surprised us after dinner when they came to do a bunch of yard work for us!  They ripped out bushes I've hated since we moved in.  They sprayed for weeds.  They raked up years worth of piled up leaves.  They hauled a bunch of brush away.  They disassembled this weird planter in the middle of our front yard.  We'll soon be removing a couple trees from our property, and hopefully boosting our curb appeal with some pretty plantings, and I could NOT be more excited.  I'm so grateful for all the help we've received from our church family in this!

There is so much else to tell you about, like our Mes'morial Day celebrations, our trip to the Big Burr Oak, the big girls getting their hair cut, Juniper's first bath at home, wrapping up our homeschool year, and tons more.  I'll fill you in next week!  Until then, enjoy Laurelai being adorable in her favorite new all-weather accessory: The Kerchief.  

release the kraken.

I'd like to introduce you to someone.  Blog friends, meet The Kraken.  The Kraken, meet my blog friends.

I know you've been aware of his presence in our lives for a while now.  I'm assuming you're also aware that, upon captaining my maiden voyage in this big guy, I decimated someone's bumper.  So I felt The Kraken was a fitting moniker, as our van is monstrously oversized and a very real menace to all vessels in the immediate vicinity.

Upon starting up the van before any trip out of the driveway, Todd and the kids have begun chanting, "RELEASE. THE. KRAKEN! RAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWRRR!" as the engine roars to life.  And then we all venture out to terrorize the land.  Naturally.

naming Juniper Elise.

If you've been reading along for a while, you know that we like to put a lot of thought into our kids' names.  (Maybe too much thought, I don't know.)  But a name is really the first gift you bestow upon a person, and it gets carried with them through their whole life, so it's a monumental responsibility to choose intentionally and well.  We try to imagine what we hope our kids become, who we hope they are, what we hope they embody, and give them a name that's a challenge and a blessing to grow into.

We loved the name Juniper, because the juniper tree is the one that shaded Elijah when he was being hunted by Jezebel.  The land had experienced drought for three whole years, and yet here was this tree in the desert, not only still living, but living abundantly enough to provide shade, which in turn provided comfort to a persecuted prophet that found very little comfort elsewhere.

We want Juniper to be a safe place for persecuted people, and a strong help to strong men.  We want her to grow to be the caliber of woman that stays strong enough to not only live abundantly herself, but that her strength would manifest itself in comfort and safety for God's people.

I loved how Todd put it in his own blog post about her name:

"The Juniper tree is a symbol of feminine virtue and strength: able to endure difficult days by God's grace, beautifully adorned with evergreen in a world full of tan, a place of respite from the woes of this world, nourishment and care in the form of a soft place to nap and a comforting meal to replenish. As women of God are safe havens for sound doctrine and soft places for those fighting hard battles, so is the Juniper tree and so may my daughter be by the grace of God who sustains her.

"My desire is that my daughter would be a genuine help to mighty men of God. That she would be upheld by God and given the high privilege of coming along His work and aiding His saints in their valiant efforts and finding her efforts memorialized along with theirs and inextricably part of their story."

We had a difficult time choosing a middle name to go with Juniper.  We like middle names that honor and acknowledge our extended family, and we thought it would be a great opportunity to choose a name from Todd's mom's side.  Todd's maternal grandmother, Esther Louise, was actually born on April 19, 1919, (almost) exactly one hundred years before Juniper's birth on April 15, 2019, and we were really wanting to come up with a name that referenced her, but it was difficult finding just the right fit.

We racked our brains trying to find the perfect name, but it just wasn't coming.  As we were leaving the hospital, with no name yet chosen, I told my sister that we were really struggling.  She texted back that she thought Juniper Elise was pretty (and that her hilarious husband suggested "Juniper Becky.")  I loved how well Juniper Elise flowed, and when I mentioned it to Todd, he loved it, too.

I love that it references Todd's grandma (Esther Louise; see what we did there?) and that my sister played a part in the naming process!  Elise is also a derivative of Elizabeth, an incredible woman of God.  As a mother, she provided safety and comfort to John the Baptist.  She was the kind of woman that married a prophet, bore and raised a prophet, comforted and befriended other women who were carrying the weight of greatness, and trusted God through all of it.

This is what we hope for Juniper Elise: that she would be great, and that her greatness would find its source in her ability to comfort and care for others in their arenas of greatness.  I pray her life will display great strength and great softness.

I am confident this is just the perfect name for her - she has already provided so much comfort after a drought season of so many unknowns.  She is strong when they said she would be weak.  She is rest and transformation and comfort and joy.  She is Juniper.

If you haven't already, you really should read Todd's take on her name.

'what's up' weekly.

This was a week of dichotomy: lots to celebrate, and lots of (attempted) resting.

Over the weekend, my parents came down to help celebrate Penelope's birthday.  Penelope wanted a 'bumblebee' themed party, and my mom delivered.  She made a bumblebee cake, complete with rock candy 'honeycomb,' which was adorable and loved by all - literally, all, as it was even gluten-free, so Callista and I got to join in the fun!

Finneas, showing how much he loves the cake by taking on the 'cheesiest smile' challenge.

Penelope is a 'gifts' person - she loves giving gifts, and she loves receiving them.  And she got some great ones this year.  In addition to the small cards and presents her siblings made her, Finneas also bought her The Sound of Music (and gave her an old "Pizza Party" cap he no longer wears).  She also got a set of the first five Nancy Drew books, which have totally enraptured both her and Atticus all week.  (This is the first time Atticus hasn't wanted to put a fiction book down, and he finished one of the books in under twenty-four hours.)   And she got a kit to make glitter bracelets, which she's crazy thrilled about!  All in all, she was delighted, and felt so loved by the gifts everyone gave her.

The day of the party, Rocco turned three-and-a-half.  Which is weird.  On the one hand, I am shocked he's getting closer and closer to four - that's preschool age!  How can he be a preschooler when he's still a tiny baby?  On the other hand, how is he still only three?  He's so articulate and participates in pretty much all the 'big kid' stuff.

Most of the rest of the week was spent camped out and cuddling.  This is what most of my days look like at this point:

Everything needed for a good day is close at hand: a sweet baby, a good book, some chocolate, and my phone.

Juniper has been having rough nights this week, so I've been doing what I can to rest during the day, but because the weather has been so beautiful and I'm wanting the kids to play outside as much as possible, I haven't napped much.  (I don't allow them to be outside while I'm asleep.)  I did endeavor to undertake reorganizing our clothing bins while the kids were outside - I'm always trying to get more creative with our storage in this house.  I purged a bunch of clothes in less-than-stellar shape, keeping only what will actually get use again, and inventorying items that need to be replaced.  I plan to vacuum seal each size of clothing, putting multiple vacuum bags in each bin.  Hopefully that will free up some physical space (and mental space)!

We got quite a bit of school done this week, and I graded a bunch of papers from last term.  I added up our logged hours, and the kids have officially done everything legally required of them for the year!  While I do still have some work I'm wanting us to accomplish through May and June (we're on a year-round schedule), it's a huge relief to know that I don't have to log anything for state requirements from here on out!

And other than that, our week has mainly consisted of fighting over who gets to be the lucky duck that gets to hold Juniper at any given moment.  This has been a really wonderful season of cocooning and getting to know our newest sweet girl.

Penelope is like a baby whisperer - she knows just how to hold Juniper to calm her down when she's fussy.

And just like that, another week is in the books!  Happy weekend, friends!