Mary Berry

This post should be called "when your 11 year old takes much better pictures of the kids in the house than you do" but that was too long. Apparently Catherine was bored today and convinced Mary it would be fun to model for a photo shoot. They took my camera outside and Catherine brought it back with her favorites. They are beautiful, and she did a great job capturing Mary!

I kind of want to print several of them. Thanks, Catherine!

Grant's Farm

With the looming realization that outings to enjoy the Fall weather are about to get a lot more complicated and difficult, we've taken a few spontaneous field trips lately, the most recent to Grant's Farm. And we did all the things: the tram ride of course, but we also got bottles to feed the baby goats, watched the elephant education show, and took pony and camel rides.

I tried to get a couple pictures of the kids' favorite animals from the tram ride because they read the blog also and that's what they like.

The farm started hiring an artist to turn the stumps from any fallen trees that are still solid inside into sculptures.

It was pretty warm, so this Arctic Elk was staying cool in the water.

Since the goats here are constantly fed, they can be a little aggressive and I wasn't sure Edie was going to enjoy herself, but she loved it! Even when a particular goat insisted on following her around and nibbling her shirt and hair.

Even the big kids had fun - the goats were pretty entertaining.

Gussie specifically asked me to take this picture because this was his favorite goat. They all tried to convince me that goats are small enough that we could keep one in the backyard.

Then we watched the elephant education show, which included listening to a lot of information about elephants and watching this one get a bath.

Michael, Gussie, and Edie were most excited about the prospect of a pony or camel ride. Gussie chose pony, and when I was looking through the pictures, Michael said it would be really funny if we could erase the lead line in the picture so it looked like Gussie was riding by himself. I have photoshop - done! Gussie loved it.

But he really loved riding the pony.

Edie chose camel and talked the rest of the day about how it was the first time she's ever ridden a camel IN HER WHOLE LIFE.

After one time around the circle I noticed her trying to scoot herself back, and she told me she was trying to sit on top of the hump instead of in front of it so she could be even higher.

Michael also chose camel, although he seemed happy to ride comfortably in front of the hump. And I had to provide him the same entertaining photoshop hack to erase the guy leading the camel.

Catherine and Mary opted out of the rides, I think because they were hoping to use that saved money for a snack in the courtyard on our way out, and I would have been totally ok with that except it looked to be about an hour wait for a pretzel and I was quickly approaching my limit for being hot and tired, so I asked them if we could abandon the pretzel line and get some ice cream when we had to stop at the grocery store on the way home anyway and all agreed. It was a much better ending to the field trip!

Exploring Identities

Edie has been trying on a lot of different identities lately, some prompted by the play of her older siblings, and some of her own inspiration. This is Cowgirl Edie Bug.

And this is the face she gave me when I called her Edie Bug. "Mom. My name is not Edie Bug. You can only call me 'Cowgirl' now."

Ok, Cowgirl, thumbs up.

(She started giving us thumbs up and saying "thumbs up" to things she approves of sometime after VBS this summer. I'm pretty sure she learned it there.)

When she's not a cowgirl, she's often a super hero. Edie informed me that when she is wearing this outfit, her name is Teresia Benedicta Super Edie Bug Ninja Warrior Fighter Girl.

And this is the face she gives criminals (and all people who forget her proper name).

This is what she thinks super girl does. It is surprisingly similar to yoga, even though I'm pretty sure she has never seen yoga before.

Of course super girls also beat things with their swords, but when she is doing that I'm usually too busy trying to save the house and furniture and siblings to take any pictures.

Thumbs up.



This morning Edie found a leotard, put it on over her pjs with ballerinas on them, and told me she would be a ballerina today. Then she asked me what a ballerina does. When I told her a ballerina dances ballet, she said, "Oh, I don't do that. Actually ballerinas help you make breffast." And then she proved herself correct.

Thumbs up.

37 Weeks

There haven't been many blog posts about this pregnancy, but that doesn't mean we haven't been progressing steadily on towards meeting baby Agnes!

Honestly, this one has been pretty hard. I had worse morning sickness more consistently and for longer than with any of the others. There was a small choroid plexus cyst in baby's brain discovered at our 18 week ultrasound which the doctor called a "variation of normal" that most likely would resolve on its own, but he was obligated to point it out because, in combination with my "advanced maternal age" (which is considered an automatic risk factor for all sorts of genetic abnormalities) it could turn out to be something, but was probably nothing. So of course I fretted over it nonstop until we were far enough along to do a follow-up ultrasound twelve weeks later. That scan showed the area of inflammation had in fact resolved on its own and confirmed there were no other concerning indicators, so I (mostly) breathed a bit easier after that. And since Agnes was a bit bigger at that point the tech got a decent shot of her face, which was fun for the kids. (The straight-ish blob on the right is her arm and hand on a different plane.)

And although I put "advanced maternal age" in slightly satirical quotes, it's absolutely true that being pregnant with number six at 37 years old is not the same as being pregnant with number one at 25 years old, or even the same as being pregnant with number five at 34 years old. In spite of having a good three years between this pregnancy and Edie, I can still feel that my physical resources are pretty well depleted, not to mention that the previous five continue to make constant (though legitimate) demands on my physical, emotional, and intellectual resources along the way. Basically I feel pretty spent, but in spite of that I also recognize that with Edie at nearly four years old, we have enjoyed quite a hiatus from the baby stage and life is comparatively kind of easy. Every child in the house can bathe themselves, use the bathroom by themselves, dress themselves, entertain themselves, and even feed themselves in a pinch. Barring illness and the occasional nightmare or random need for a night time snuggle, the kids all sleep all night, and therefore so do I. If I forget about something and we suddenly need to be in the van in under three minutes, it's actually possible (assuming I don't care if not everyone is wearing matching shoes). With a nursing newborn again, all of these little luxuries go "poof!" (which incidentally is the name of the diapers I've had to stock in the house again).

And yet, there is a lot I'm looking forward to. There is the obvious privilege of getting to know and enjoy the company of new little human. Edie is also very excited about being the Big Sister, and really all of the kids are functionally so much older than they were when Edie was born that it is interesting to see how different their viewpoints are this time around and fun to think about the relationships they'll have with the new little one.

I've been as useless as normal with belly pictures this time around, but I found a couple on my phone that were a result of true boredom. This one is from about 27 weeks, when I was sitting around waiting for any latecomers at the beginning of choir camp at church each morning.

And this one is from a couple weeks ago, when I was waiting around at soccer practice. With three kids in soccer this season, I do a lot of waiting around at practices.

Now we are officially past the 37 week mark, which in the medical community is considered full term, which means we're go for home birth assuming everything continues on the healthy, uneventful track we've had so far. With this the kids' curiosity as to exactly when they get to meet Agnes has been renewed, but I really have no answer for them at all. Edie surprised us at 37+2 weeks (which is basically today in Agnes' gestation), and Gussie was a little on the early side at about 38+5 weeks, but the other three were all born somewhere between 40-41 weeks, so the range of "normal" is pretty wide at this point. Until then I get to listen to Edie's daily exclamations about how "Aggie-ness" will be born without any clothes on. I think it's her favorite thing about her little sister at this point.

Happy Birthday Gussie!

For the month leading up to his birthday, Gussie changed his mind so many times about what he wanted to do to celebrate that it ended up being very simple: cake at our house. But he has insisted for months and months that he had to have a hedgehog cake. We followed a food network video and came up with these guys. The level of craftsmanship is not quite up to the video example, but Gussie loved them.

The kids have all recently started insisting on lighting their own candles.

A glowing hedgehog! You can tell he loved it because his dimples are really noticeable.

We also had some family presents. The kids love thinking up and buying presents for each other and it's so much fun to watch them give and open.

Lego car from Edie.

Coloring book from Mary.

More Lego sets from Michael.

And a pinching/grabbing arm from our friends the Rife family, who were not there with us but sneaked this into our van without Gussie seeing after we were playing at their house one morning and Gussie loved it so much he almost couldn't leave.

And Catherine made Gussie a custom, durable shield to go with his sword but I don't have a picture, I think because it was too big to wrap and I missed the reveal.

And we got him this massive sword, still pictured with a paper shield because this was before his actual birthday. 

I was looking at wooden swords on Etsy to buy for his birthday, and Michael Jr saw me and immediately decided he wanted to purchase one with his saved money. Gussie overhead him talking about this and wanted to see all the swords so he could also pick one to buy after his birthday because he was banking on some birthday money. So I let him look through and pick out his favorite to "put on his wish list" so we didn't lose it, intending to buy it for his birthday. He did pick out his favorite: the one with the carved lion head handle. I had read the dimensions and details for Michael's sword when he picked it and assumed this was the same because it was made by the same guy and similarly priced, but then the swords arrived and Michael's was pretty normal and Gussie's was as tall as him. Since this was before his birthday and I had some time, I was planning to contact the maker and see if I could exchange it for a shorter sword with a lion head handle, so I put this one away until I heard from him. But within a day, Michael Jr (who was playing with his sword that he had purchased) "accidentally" told Gussie about his sword, and then "accidentally" showed Gussie his sword, at which point I figured I might as well just let Gussie decide if he wanted that one or to exchange it. And he vehemently wanted the giant one. He wouldn't even listen to a whole sentence about exchanging it for one closer to the size of Michael's, even though it is so heavy that no sheath will hold it, which doesn't matter because it drags on the floor when he tries to put it in a sheath or belt because he's short and it's long. He loves it, and he wouldn't hear of anything different. So he ended up getting his birthday sword early.

Gussie at 6 is just as fabulously fun as he always has been. He loves building Lego trucks and buildings, is getting super strong on the playground and on his bike, and (obviously) is currently obsessed with guards, soldiers, and kings who fight with swords, spears, and bows and arrows. Although I don't have to officially record for him until next year, Gussie was very interested in starting "real" school with the big kids this year so we have started some focused table work on reading, writing, science, and math. And he's determined to get better at chess. Gussie is also usually the first one to jump up to help when Edie drops one of her Lego creations and it splatters on the floor, or when she can't find something or can't reach something, or when she gets stuck in a tree (which happens more often than you would think). He still attempts a lot of his communication in animal howls, shrieks, and grunts but he also sings, a lot, and very loudly. He spends a lot of time hugging my belly, and he still won't let me call him Augustine.

Happy Birthday Gussie!