Less Than a Month
My friends, it’s less than a month to my due date! Please continue to pray for a safe pregnancy, delivery, and baby. The final stretch is finally here, and I am relieved to be rounding the corner to the finish line!
This past weekend, we hosted Miss Lady’s 8th annual Tea Party, and now that that’s completed, I’m pretty much ready for baby at any time. The crib is set up, baby clothes sorted through, diapers ready, diaper bag for baby is packed. Just a few odds and ends to tie up at this point in time. I’m trying to mentally shift gears to house cleaning and also food preservation prior to baby’s arrival.
Call it nesting if you like, but in all practicality, I’m about to enter the flush of harvest season as baby is set to arrive, and the house needs to be in order if we’re going to keep things moving along as smoothly as possible. The basement has needed cleaning for months, but I was too sick to deal with it over the winter, and now it’s a necessity to get it cleaned well before harvest season. The house needs deep cleaning again, because that’s just the way it goes with a big family home full-time, and if I don’t want things to fall into utter chaos, it’s best to take care of these things now, because I just won’t have time until winter.
Today, I marked tentative dates on the calendar for butchering chickens and pigs, and honestly, I’ve been avoiding thinking about it because the idea of butchering with a nursing baby is just a little more than I can handle thinking about at the moment. I’ve only just begun to let myself remember what it’s like to give birth so I can better prepare myself mentally… butchering just seems like too much to think about right now! I know it’ll be fine, and we’ve got a lot of help lined up to tentatively help.
But honestly, I just don’t even want to think about putting anything else on the calendar after next week, and my mind is only allowing me to think about a shadow of an outline of the time between now and Christmas.
In the last two weeks, I’ve mostly been focusing on trying to get back into a more normal routine… schoolwork, my daily walks, a lighter garden load, and basic housework. We hosted Miss Lady’s Tea Party on Saturday, and thank the good Lord, I kept it low-key. We used vinyl tablecloths with blankets on top for a picnic setup. Anyone who wanted chairs brought their own, and the only tables we used were for food. All dishes were disposable, except serving dishes.
My watercolor painting… I didn’t do it at the party, but I had to do some! 
A gorgeous “Thank you” boquet from one of my best friends. 
Elijah going at it with the pallet water colors. 
The kids are enjoying using left over supplies. It’s always nice when they find something to work on quietly together.
We put out watercolor paper and paints for everyone to play around with, and Scott gave multiple tractor rides for trailer loads of squealing, delighted girls! I think everyone had a good time. I didn’t do much work that morning but felt pretty sore by the time the party started, so I was more than happy to just pop into a chair and visit with different guests between refilling my lemonade cup or grabbing another plate of food. So, thank you to all of the wonderful women and young ladies who came to share a beautiful summer day with us! We thoroughly enjoyed your company. Thank you for bringing a dish to pass, good conversation, and your beautiful faces!
Also, I never did get around to garden tours for those interested. If you still want to come check them out, give me a call!
Scott and the boys got the better part of the west wall on the new building over the weekend. They have a couple more boards to put up, and then they have to trim them. Again, progress on things is slow. We pluck away a little at a time. We’re going to be getting a flock of geese tomorrow, mostly babies with the parents as part of the package. Aaron was doing a little prep work for that for us today. And Scott and the boys worked on boiling down potatoes for the pigs the other day. Aaron fed them to the pigs a little at a time.
I’ve still been doing some weeding just out of sheer necessity. If the carrots are too crowded, they’ll do poorly, same with the onions. I still have rows of carrots to weed, but I’m contemplating just letting it all go. I was squatting down to pick green beans with Adeline today, and it was mighty uncomfortable! Plus, the carpel tunnel takes about two days to hit me after weeding, and when it finally hits, it hits hard. Today would have been a good day for weeding, it was beautiful out, but I needed to take it easy. Tomorrow is a busy day for me, so I won’t do any weeding then, but maybe Wednesday or Thursday I’ll do another round.
The kids check out a little toad while I pick green beans. 
Pregnant Momma squatting to pick green beans. Kneeling hurts a little too much without a cushion right now. 
Baby frogs and toads were all over the place today! I don’t know if it’s because we finally got a good rain, or if that’s just a coincidence, but we saw them hopping all over while we were walking around the yard today. 
Miss Lady’s green beans!
I’m pretty resigned to the fact that I’ll probably have to give up on any weeding anymore. I can’t use the hoe comfortably anymore as it really irritates the carpel tunnel, and the pushing motion is getting pretty rough on my back and belly. I can do hand weeding, but like I said, it kind of comes back to haunt me at this point. Things are mostly large enough to do fine at this point. Plus, I have to keep reminding myself that this was the plan all along… try to keep weeds at bay for as long as I could handle, and then see where things go as my physical capabilities diminish.
Despite the fact that I’m not where I’d like to be with weeding, the gardens are still coming along well. The first round of potatoes will likely be ready to be dug in a few weeks, my blue corn has cobs set and looks good, my beans (despite not being trellised) are setting lots of flowers, the tomato plants are loaded with fruit, my snowball pumpkins are doing fantastic, and the first sunflower opened today… I need to hill the second round of potatoes this week. Probably Thursday if the weather is cooperative. I’ll probably have to get some help with that job as I have to hoe and rake to get that job done.
One of many snowball pumpkins. 
Turnips, peas, lettuce, beans, and more from the first sizable harvest. 
The first sunflower to open! It’s a volunteer from last year.
I need to begin preservation soon. We got a decent picking of green beans today from the kids’ gardens. We picked quite a few peas, and my beets and turnips are mostly ready to be dealt with. I can probably get away with just cooking with fresh stuff right now rather than canning, but in another two weeks, I’m pretty sure I’ll need to bust out the pressure canner. We’re currently trying to eat as many dinners from our canned goods as possible. I need those jars empty so we can put up what we bring in!
Tomorrow is my next doctor’s appointment…. 36 weeks! I’m not sure how many times I’ll go in after this. Typically, they’d have moms come in every week, but that’s just so incredibly impractical for me for multiple reasons, so as long as there are no issues, I’m not sure what they’ll want to do. My only question right now is when I can resume exercising after baby is born. I’ll be doing plenty with the garden, I know, but I would like to maintain as much of a walking routine as possible, because I’ve done this enough to know how hard it can be to get back into good habits if I take too long to start them up again.
I need to check out strollers and car seats this evening. Our strollers are shot, and the car seat we have is probably done at this point. We’re pretty well set on other baby gear. Scott’s co-workers and employees surprised him with a baby shower on Friday! They got us a few basics that you need every time, and they got us a bunch of baby girl clothes, which is pretty great since we didn’t have much to speak of. I know a few people are very excited we’re going to have another girl after all these years. I’ve got friends who have some stuff, and we’ve been given a few things here and there, but this gives us a good base for the first few months. And a friend of ours knit a beautiful blanket for baby which she gave us recently. Scott picked up a special tree for the baby the other day. It’ll have to be grown indoors. Hopefully we can take good care of it and keep it around for years to come!
All of the gifts from Scott’s work. It was such a sweet surpise! 
Scott picked up a special tree for the baby. This one will have to be grown indoors. Hopefully, we can keep it alive for a long time! 
The baby blanket from our good friend.
Aaron and Adeline’s baby bunny is 3 weeks old today and doing well. They kids are excited we’ve got a few baby animals thriving this year!
I think that about sums things up. I’m not sure how many more posts I’ll write before baby comes, if any. So, don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a while. But chances are, I’ll have at least one more post before then! In the meantime, keep us in your prayers!
Love and Blessings~Danielle
