"Just wombin' around"

I'm uploading a few photos here, so I can remember the happy minutia of our life.

Here goes:

I think the following two photos illustrate the idea of a mom having her "hands full"

Isaiah had just woken up from a too-short nap, and needed some cuddles to help transition him back into the waking, noisy world his older brother runs on his behalf.

Noah saw my lap (which hardly exists anymore) and decided to join in, too.

They are extremely adorable, aren't they?

Sweet little Noah is working on his skills of taking self-portraits. 

I think he's getting remarkably good at it.

I took off to see my midwife this morning and Patrick was left in charge.

This is what I came home to.

In fairness to him, he brought his laptop into the dining room and continued to fight the culture war while the kids destroyed things played.

I fought my own culture war by trying to get them to put their stuff back into the toy cupboard. 

Patrick once again showed his parenting prowess by getting them to do it by acting like it was a game.

And look what my dear husband did for the first time:

Slaughtered a chicken at a friend's house.

 We ate it for Sunday dinner the following night.

 The remainders have already been made into stock to be made into chicken soup later this week.
(The kids love chicken-and-rice soup, 

and I recently discovered they like chicken-and-quinoa soup equally! 

Healthy food! Hurray!)

I also made two dozen banana-nut muffins, 

two loaves of bread (note to self: make more. That'll last for only about 2-3 days in this house), 

3 turkey potpies from the leftovers from our turkey dinner 

and enough beef stew for two dinners. 

My freezer is rather packed.

I'm still planning to do more.

I have no nearby parents or in-laws to feed us this postpartum time.
So I need to be creative and get cracking now. 

Next on my agenda is granola, 

more turkey pot pies (that massive bird yielded quite the leftovers!),

 carrot-nut muffins, foccacia, and shepherd's pie 

(which, amazingly, is far better with ground pork than ground beef).

*****

I'm trying to get on top of some things, as you can see, but I need to remember to sleep, too.
Not that I am some martyr who's up 'til midnight scrubbing toilets
(although I did stay up 'til midnight making the turkey pot pies, mostly because it was just so relaxing having the house to myself after all three males were asleep. Plus I was watching a Netflix movie as I worked, so really, it was like a little holiday.)!
Mostly, by 8pm I am so done for the day, but I also know realistically that the chores I have leftover will take me until at least 9:30 or 10 to finish. So I stay up until 10.
I just don't do the chores.
Then I wake up grumpy because the house is messy, and I didn't get a full night's sleep! Stupid!

*****

The kids are just so darn adorable these days.
The other day, I caught Isaiah crawling along the back of the couch. He scared the daylights out of me.
When I asked him what he was doing, he shrugged and said non-chalantly,
"just wombin' around."

Exactly.

So if anyone asks me "what's new?" these days, that will be my response.
A whole lot of wombin' around.
And not much else.


And Noah discovered a grub while digging in our garden and declared it was an "earth lobster" and later excitedly told Patrick that he found a lobster, but not like the one's in Nova Scotia.
Then he built it a 'house' for it out of soil.

******

And here are a few things that are inspiring me these final days with Baby Lemon:

Adjusting to New Life in the home:
Such wisdom here from a mother of eight children.

October Goals and Recommended Clicking:
The first half of this post is stellar for me and fellow pregnant women!
Boy, do I wish I could run into someone this positive and affirming in the grocery store.

St. Francis de Sales and His Advice to Crazy Pregnant Women

A lovely, uplifting series of quotes from St. Francis de Sales, complete with commentary from the newest Catholic mommy-blogging sensation, Christy.

(I'm proud to say, she's a friend in real life {although we haven't seen each other in person in years}.)