It’s Sunday afternoon, the first day of our “work week” since Jeremy’s work schedule changed several weeks ago. We’ve had church, done school, ate breakfast, lunch, and snacks, and Elvie has joined and surpassed me in a bit of cleaning. (She took over each thing I took on, until I had to stand by and direct while she completed everything.)

We read about emperor penguins in Character Sketches today, so we watched an episode of a show on Antarctica that featured them. The virtue they are illustrating in our book is generosity–namely the giving of gifts that require sacrifice. I think about the penguins shuffling with their eggs for months in the dark cold of the antarctic winter, and I feel ashamed for my complaints about the trials of pregnancy. I have something like nine weeks left as of today. Some days I feel like I won’t make it–though this feeling usually passes. Eventually.

a new phase for beadie

We also started potty training Beatrice today, which has been neither too challenging nor too easy, but the perfect Goldilocks just right. It was really for her benefit that we watched the documentary, as she is not currently allowed to play back in any of the bedrooms or in the basement until she shows the proper awareness of her need for the bathroom. She’s actually surprised me in being much more self-aware than I thought she would be, so the moratorium may be lifted fairly quickly. At the moment, though, she is confined to the Colloquium, which she was already becoming somewhat bored with.

I had meant to start training her on a weekend, but the past three weekends have been very difficult. For some reason I feel a lot worse on the weekends, and then this past weekend was Ephraim’s birthday, and I was in the kitchen cooking all day at his request.

ephraim’s eleventh birthday

I have been watching cake decorating videos when I’m laid out in bed. (Also when I’m walking on the treadmill.) In the former situations, the boys often come watch with me. Last week we were watching a compilation of decorated cakes when Clive said, “Well, Mom, yours definitely never look like that, but they do taste good!” Which, really, I’ll take ugly-but-tastes-good over the opposite. It did make me step up my game considerably for Ephraim’s cake. Clive is brutally honest in a very impersonal sort of way. When he said that we all laughed because it was true about my cakes. And then I resolved to try harder. That is one of my favorite things about him. He is really inspiring, often without meaning to be.

Ephraim requested a marble cake with chocolate frosting.
He also requested:
banana pudding,
an apple pie,
“Better Muffins” for breakfast
tacos for lunch
a “smorgasbord” of many kinds of food, including hamburgers and hotdogs, for dinner.

He thankfully whittled that list down, leaving out the pie and smorgasbord. Then the hamburgers were dropped after everyone was so full from the muffins that they didn’t want to eat lunch. He decided just hot dogs for dinner were good enough.

better muffins

The “Better Muffins” are so called because they came from a recipe claiming to be the “best muffins” that were anything but. After researching how to improve them, I tweaked the recipe, then wrote it down in my notebook. I wrote Better Muffins as the title as they were certainly better than the first go-round. They could still be improved upon, I think. At any rate, the kids love them, and the approved immediately of the name.

a new phase for Aurick

He’s been very unpredictable with his naps lately. I am thinking he is ready to drop his morning nap. It’s about that time–he’s sixteen months. This throws a bit of a wrench into our school schedule, but we will adapt and keep on rolling. In a large family with many littles, you have to adapt constantly. (I am reminding myself.)

adapting for flannery

Now that we’re in the single-digit week countdown, my thoughts are turning constantly to preparing things for when the baby comes. This is kind of a joke, because you can’t really ever really prepare things properly for a baby. Not the way your nesting instinct wants to prepare, anyway. There will always be something undone or that needs to be redone. Of course, the baby doesn’t care one bit whether things are done or not. Somehow, though, my mind refuses to acknowledge this truth. I make mental list after mental list, and real list after real list.

The size of the list compared to the pregnancy-induced physical limitations that inhibit the completion of said list has been frustrating to me. I am trying to learn (may I finally learn!) to take those in stride and just complete what I can.

Including this blanket! I really need to complete it! You’d think I’d be done, since I have to sit down so much.