This morning was spent prepping food! And WOW. Having Brady home and rocking baby duty made for a very productive handful of hours for me!!
While the kids ate breakfast, I mixed up a big batch of party mix, and the first batch of pumpkin muffins. Rarely do I get that much done before the kids leave for school!
I continued onto a second batch of muffins, and as soon as those were in the oven, I started on the cake mix cookies. Devils food and lemon for homemade oreos.
I’ll admit that I actually felt somewhat defeated with how well the muffins turned out. They turned out WAY better than usual! But I used canned pumpkin from the grocery store :/ Thats the only difference. It makes me sad that my cooked, home preserved pumpkin doesn’t make as nice of a muffin. But maybe its too wet? I’m not totally sure yet, but I won’t give up. All my efforts still turned out a huge haul of baking!
I took a breather at that point and had *ahem* breakfast…
Yes. Thats coffee in my weekend mug. Its Wednesday, for reference. And the beaters from my cream cheese icing. You know you’re all just jealous.
Once my coffee was where it belonged, I filled the oreos…
And used the rest of the filling to top up a muffin for everyone for after school.
Now. I am beat. BEAT. But one can only sit for so long before one must get her butt up and take her baby in for another appointment, mustn’t one?
Rowan requested to join soccer, and the season has officially begun!
As in, it begun yesterday evening. The kids had their first practice.
I was the mom who forgot the water, but Rowan very happily took a few swigs of my coffee and kept on going!
Rowan has never been part of an official soccer team before, but he plays at recess with his friends, many of which are older than him. He’s been climbing the ladder in his skills, and now that he has a field and some direction, its VERY cool to see how naturally talented he is!
Practice #1 was yesterday, and game #1 was today!
I won’t post too many game photos, because these are not all my kids, believe it or not. But he just positively crushed it. He never stopped running! And by running, I basically mean leaping, because he just bounced and flew and leapt through the air, most of the time with one hand in his pocket 🤣
So. We didn’t win tonight game. But who cared? No one. We could hear kids on the field saying “Wait, who won?” It wasn’t really a big deal. Both teams were really good, and REALLY cute!! 💜
Rowan was thrilled to have his cheering section! Brady and I brought the five kids (Thank you, Rae, Tom, and Kevin for hanging with the babies) and Cher and Sandy even joined the fray!! Ro felt like a rockstar, and I want him to keep feeling uplifted and celebrated.
I have lots of things I can post about on here soon. We’ve made some progress on some renovations in our new house. I went on a greenhouse date with Cher the other day and bought some plants. We bought some furniture off of Facebook Marketplace to make our house work better. We have a kid starting a sport for the first time ever. And we’re going on a bit of a trip in the near future. Lots and lots of things. But goodness – things feel a bit busy for me to actually wrap my brain around many long blogs.
Long blobs sounds like poops…
Anyway…
What I will show you is this:
The other day I went downstairs to tuck Dekker in to bed, and I leaned the door to the basement closed, like I do every night. And I saw this mess.
At first, I was grossed out at how much mud was on the door. And then I wondered 🤔 did someone barf maybe?? And then I realized it was BLOOD from Solly’s gaping head wound the other day!
Not to worry, he is healing up beautifully and is no worse for wear! In fact, he is still stinkin’ cute!
But goodness. SO much blood that day. I can’t believe I was originally shocked at the spatters on the garage floor. This was SO much grosser!
Today was full, with some big challenges and some really lovely events as well. And I’m now ferociously tired and ready to sleep sooooo I’ll leave you with these pictures I took of Wavy and Solly after they bathed and then immediately played outside.
Punks 🤣
Ah well. As luck would have it, a couple of our kids have some kind of funky virus, so it seems church is off the table for tomorrow as it is. What other reason is there to get clean anyway??
Please. PLEASE. Don’t take this post too seriously 😅 Don’t feel the need to educate me. I’m SO aware of the subject, but I feel a very small kind of way, and I’d like to share it. And I BET, within some of you, you can agree with me.
So. Into it we go.
I miss crappy plastic bags from the grocery store.
There. I said it. I really mean it, too.
I used those things for absolutely everything.
Need to send something extra to school with a kid?
Need to leave something on someone’s doorstep?
Got a smaller amount of garbage to gather up?
Packing up for the lake or for an emergency?
Kid has an accident away from home?
Kid goes swimming and has a wet bathing suit?
GRAB A GROCERY BAG!!!
When I find myself elbow deep in wild diaper blowouts, I call out for a bag to just dump wipes into, and what comes running? An entire white garbage bag. For ONE diaper. But ONE diaper that neeeeeds to go outside asap. So what’s a mom to do??? Put it in a paper bag? Or a cloth bag??
*sigh*
I miss you, environmentally-destroying plastic bags…
Ok, folks! We have some full weekends coming up, so its time to get as prepared for spring as we can. Hopefully this weekend, we can do some productive things.
The biggest thing is always outerwear. You guys probably know this about me, but outwear is my nemesis. Just my least favorite part of every new season. But, alas, seasons change and outwear is needed. Conveniently, I was very smart when we were packing to move, and I set aside spring jackets from our mess of a garages, so everyone has jackets. Boom! Well. Not the lemon drop, but thats ok. Then I got into rubber boots a couple of weeks ago. Everyone has them. Boom! Well. Everyone who walks, anyway.
This weekend, I hope to get into ALL the other stuff. Shoes. Sandals. Shorts. Swimsuits. Tees and tanks. Plus, everyone in our family needs a thing or two that are dressy. And while some people LOVE this part of the seasons, with our amount of children, I’m happy to do it, but it is daunting.
Other things that need to still come together this spring are getting the backyard to make sense. Digging out the deadfall from the flowerbeds. Planting what we’d like to plant. Getting the swing set assembled. Getting a fire pit (ie dryer drum) and hypothetically a climbing dome. Getting the barbecue onto the patio where it needs to live. Basically, the backyard looks like a junkyard and we’d really like that to change.
We need to sort out bikes for the kids. We have lots of smaller bikes, but the kids continue to grow, so its time to size some kids up. And on that subject, lake bikes! We need to figure out which bikes should stay at the lake and which should come back here and be traded out.
Thank goodness for garage sale day in a couple weeks!!
Welp. Today wound up to be fairly challenging, I won’t lie. Lots and lots of factors. I’m so beat.
This evening, I was granted a break, and I lay in bed, crocheted a baby blanket I started for our lemon drop, and watched some true crime on YouTube. I didn’t even put kids down for bedtime. What a lovely rest 💜 Thank you, Brady. I appreciate you.
I’ll leave you with a cute picture of Laela, rocking both flowers and flannel. I love this girls style.
She is the cutest little thing 💜
Ok guys. Halfway done the week. It’s felt like a long one. Bedtime!
Today, Brady had seizure clinic. And by that, I mean we went to RUH, where they flashed strobe lights at him to try to make him have a seizure, and he took a nice squishy nap with a stack of electrodes on his head. Sounds restful hey??
What it did mean was that I got to drive him in, kid free, and sit in a chair by a window, and rest my body a little. It meant I got to have a really nice phone call, a chat with my cousin who I happened to run into, and I even got to drink a delicious purple drink from Starbucks! I am an incredibly lucky duck!!
I even got to top it all off with one of those delicious greasy burgers from the mall cafe that I love so much. But it was extra good because I got to have a weird hospital lunch date with Brady 😆🥰
No results on the EEG yet. We were warned they’re a good ways behind. But that’s ok. The thing that caused the seizure is already out so the whole thing feels a bit moot. Ah well. It made for a mid week date! Happy seizure clinic Tuesday!
Brady went to work this morning. Which is what I was originally going to post about. It felt weird and new and like I wasn’t quite ready to have someone else take care of him?? I don’t know. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it felt a little funny.
Once he was out the door, the day started to settle. The girls went to aunties. Rowan and Solly went downstairs to play. Dekker was reading upstairs. I was feeding a couple of babies. The house was quite quiet. Until it wasn’t. I heard wild screaming verrrrry faintly, and Dekker and I looked at each other and we tried to listen to where it was coming from. We decided it was from outside. Not from us.
Except it totally was us.
The middle boys flew into the living room. Solly was bleeding really good and proper (he’s really cleaned up here already) and Rowan was wild eyed behind him, carting a box of bandaids.
As the story goes, they were digging for treasure in the backyard, perhaps a little too close to one another, and Sol took a spade to the forehead. I gave him a good, safe opportunity to say whether or not it was an accident, and he confirmed with certainty that it was not on purpose. So at least we had that!
I immediately took some pictures and texted them out to some nurse friends of mine to see what to do. We’ve NEVER had stitches before over here, and I had no desire to drag him into the city for a bandaid. But it became pretty clear that we were looking at needing some extra care.
I paced the house and made some phone calls. Meanwhile, Rowan sat on the floor in the middle of the living room beside Solly. He had wipes out, and he was cleaning the blood from Solly’s hands. He had a book beside them, and he read Sol stories and was so close and kind and soft to his brother 💜 It was really nice to see him not be defensive, and to see Sol being so forgiving and receptive to the help.
Cher arrived with bells on, and I basically high fived her on the way out! Solly moved his booster seat up to sit in the row closest to me, I gave him a piece of gum, and as we drove, I let him know he might end up with stitches. He had a cry, and processed a bit while we drove, and then I let him choose the music. With Family Force Five blasting, we drove to JPCH.
His gash and my eyebrow match lol!
We waited in emerg, but it wasn’t too busy. He wasn’t in tons of pain anymore.
Close up gore 🚨
Once he was checked in and waiting for a room, they lathered him up with lidocaine ointment to freeze the area up.
We made it to a room and he was assessed by multiple nurses. Everyone who looked closely at him said they weren’t sure if he would need stitches, and that glue miiiiight be sufficient. It was hard to say. He ate a popsicle to pass the time.
Finally, a physician came in and decided quite quickly that stitches would be ideal. She said with where it was, and the fact that it was as long as it was, and gaping as wide as it was, that sutures would be best. Sol cried. He was afraid. And then he was promised a second popsicle, while they did the stitches. That was the straw that STRENGTHENED the camels back! He was ready!
To clarify this picture up here ☝️ he is only bleeding in the one spot. The bit underneath his eye is blood that ran with the freezing ointment. No wound there!
He really wanted me to take pictures, which was adorable, and also not the doctors favorite idea, which we totally understood! So we have a prepping picture…
… and then after!!! Popsicle still going, stitches all in place!
A close up of the beautifully placed stitches! They look fabulous, and besides some twitches while he held my hand, he was perfectly calm and still through the entire process. Which is NOT how I thought it would go!!
Lucky duck got to follow the whole thing up with a third popsicle!!! Luckier duck, I got one too!!
The yellow ones are the best one. IYKYK.
He held my hand as we walked back to the van afterwards. He mentioned to me that he thought it would be SO bad but that it actually wasn’t so bad at all. This is giant success for Solly, if you know him. God’s hand was covering him – covering us – without question!
In order to make this possible, I had three friends help me and offer opinions and advice. I had my doctor texting with me as well, telling me I could call her from a few floors up, if I needed help. I had my remaining six children spread out amongst three different caregivers. My village is over and above what the average person could ever dream of, and for that – for you beautiful people – I am overwhelmed with gratefulness 💜
Ok. I really really hope this is it for stitches in heads for 2024. Feels like we’ve already had our share this year…
Last night, we managed to get longer stretches of sleep! With those, however, came longer wakeful stretches in between 😅 Always a trade off with a baby!
But the sun really helps. This kind of weather gives me so much hope 💜 Even though I know where I live, and weather is always a roll of the dice, I’m feeling excited for the upcoming warm season.
We are definitely still managing day by day with Brady’s recovery. He is one month post-op today, and it feels like he’s overcome the biggest challenges and is on to the part of recovery centred around getting some energy back. In many ways, it feels like his surgery maaaaaybe didn’t actually happen? But I’m pretty sure it did. Though his scar is already pretty tucked away!
Here he is, making baked oatmeal for lunch for the family 💜 Just like he always used to. I love that normalcy.
We skipped church this morning in an effort actually rest, while also possibly getting a job or two done here, as well as having some intentional outside time. I ran outside briefly in the morning in a tank top, and I wasn’t even uncomfortably cold! And if you know me, thats saying something, being as I am almost ALWAYS cold.
The morning was restful, as a couple of kids slept in and a couple woke up a little snotty. Lunch was delicious. And now Brady is starting a project! I hope to crochet a bit in my chair while watching a little true crime, and making some summertime lists and plans! Have to figure out how to sleep nine people in our camper…
