Congratulations to Margaret!

We celebrated today with donuts, strawberry milk, a trip to the World Market, Zaxby’s (and the surprise visit with Margaret’s godfather), followed by a trip to Costco and then to the International Market.

It was a full day but of course we came home and watched Star Trek Voyager, one of Margaret’s favorite shows.

Welp, folks, this blog started with Karol as a baby and yesterday he turned 18! He took the day off of work, served Mass with the senior priest in our diocese (who is 104!!), hung out with friends, then we took him out for dinner.

Selfie by Joshua.

Due to the the pandemic, our bishop gave permission to pastors to administer the sacrament of Confirmation, so that meant that Karol was confirmed by that priest who baptised him 14 years ago.

Early in the morning of June 14th, I started feeling like I was in the zone. I started having contractions, but they weren’t hard or regular, just there. Sleeping was kinda hard, I’d doze off then wake back up, then doze off, then wake back up for a contraction. I didn’t want to wake Joshua up just in case it was labor and I would need him to be awake for me later.

The contractions were getting strong enough that I didn’t feel like I wanted Joshua to go to his holy hour, but somehow I had managed to fall asleep long enough to not hear his alarm go off, so I didn’t ask him to stay home.

When he got home, I told him that I thought it was the day. So we kinda started prepping a bit. I called my midwife because the contractions were anywhere from five to ten minutes apart. As they weren’t hard, we decided to just keep in touch throughout the day.

If you’ve never read a birth story of mine before, I usually have no clue how to tell I’m in real labor and my kids tend to come within three hours from start to finish.

This was not the case with Norbert.

The midwives and their student came by at about 530pm and got set up. I was checked and at something like five centimeters. Given that I’d been having contractions for nearly 17 hours at that point, I wanted to cry. This was supposed to be an easy labor. I’d been working out and eating well throughout the whole pregnancy. I’d been doing walkdowns and squats the day before. This is baby number seven, he should have birthed himself!

So after a bit of time and a walk around the yard, the midwives left to go get a bite to eat and left me with the instruction to take a benadryl and get some sleep.

This worked.

Joshua tracked those contractions. I have no recollection of them, at all. I know I had some discomfort, but it wasn’t horrible. He was the one who made the call to the midwives to have them come back around 150am.

When they arrived I was in a bit more pain and the contractions were a lot stronger. I moved to the birth pool right before they got upstairs and had a “push now!” contractions. Then my body stopped doing anything. That is the worst feeling because I started wondering “did labor stop again!?”

Nope, I had another contraction that was also a “push now!” contraction and out he came. His head was partly out, I had come out of the birth pool enough that it would not have been safe to sit back down.

Oh, no, I did not have the energy to stand and go through another contraction! So I just pushed on and pushed him out the rest of the way.

Norbert was born at 230am on June 15th. He came out crying but calmed when he was placed on my chest.

I don’t think it will ever not amaze me how there is no pain (for me) right after the baby is out. It is crazy. The following week, oh the pains are horrible, but for the first hour after birth, it’s amazingly pain free.

I got cleaned up, Norbert has his newborn exam. He was 9 pounds even, 20 inches long with a head full of brown hair. Everything was great, his apgars were nine at birth and ten a few minutes later.

Welcome to the world, Norbert!

We added a new baby to our family in June, Norbert Solanus. He’s a cute little guy and a fine addition to the family. The kids love him so much and have been super helpful. Scholastica (who is six now) loves to change diapers. Go on girl.

I should probably do a birth story for Norbert at some point too!

In the meantime, here are some pictures of our family:

So I’m not late in sharing this. We did record this on Christmas Eve though but I forgot to share it with the world. (Or my small little blog).

 

Hey, how ya doing? It’s been a while!

Merry Christmas! We went to Midnight Mass, the older boys served, the youngest daughter slept, the youngest son was a happy cheerful guy (until picture time, which I’ll happily take).

Here is Peter “talking” with himself in the foward facing camera.

So this house, wow. We didn’t expect to buy as soon as we did and we certainly didn’t expect to find someone as wonderful as what we did! We had three requirements for a house: 1. It needed to be on land. 2. It needed to get good internet so Joshua could work from home. 3. Location. We needed to be within a 1/2 hour of Lafayette.  This house has it all.

It was built in 1877 and sits on nearly 3.5 acres. There are four bedrooms, we use three of them and the fourth is Joshua’s office. We are the first owners who are not decendents of the builder of the home. That is really humbling to think about.

There are a few changes we are going to make, mostly it’s just redoing the kitchen to make it more friendly for my cooking style. I currently have a 1960s stove in there though and it is pretty cool, but I need something bigger. Aside from that and adding some more insulation to the attic, the house was/is in great shape. The previous owners took great care of it…and kept receipts of everything done for the past 10 or more years!

So that’s the new house. We love it. The kids love it. We are accepting visitors so let me know when you have time to come by!

Someone texted me the other day and let me know that my blog has been silent for three months. It’s been a very busy few months. We did a trip to Michigan to visit with my cousin Paul and his family. Paul had cancer and they knew that he wasn’t going to live much longer, so I wanted to see him and before he passed away. I made another trip to see him a few days before he died as well. He died on September 20th. Please pray for the respose of his soul and for his wife and young children as well as other family he left behind.

That trip was followed by my birthday (which we normally don’t make a big deal about, but I turned 40 so I said we were going out to dinner). That night we also went to look at a house and fell in love with it. We made an offer the next day and when it was accepted, things kinda became a whirlwind.

The kids have also started back with violin lessons and we are making our way through the school year as well, so really that keeps us very busy.

We closed on the house on October 6th and have been busy making it our home since. I’ll do a post more about that later.

So that’s where we’ve been.