Hess Happenings: Five Months Home with Heidi

Another month home, and a mostly positive month it has been.

When I got home from having Ruth in the hospital it was on top of my only weekend a year that I go away. I had only seen the other kids for about 4 hours for the previous five days. Heidi melted my heart by coming to me to snuggle and saying, “mom-mom”.

My sweet, snuggly girl!

She now is climbing up the stairs as soon as I turn my back. We have to put the baby gate up or she will be halfway up before you realize it. She’s not only quick but very quiet.

Heidi had her bangs trimmed for the first time! She had her hair shaved regularly when she lived in the orphanage so we love seeing her hair grow!

She is continuing to do better each day with her mealtimes. She is also finally getting the hang of gripping onto things with her hands. Carrie was very excited when she started to hold onto her hand to walk to another room.

She loves all her sisters in turn. She goes through swings of liking one sister more than another and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for it. this is currently one of the biggest issues we have in our home: fighting over who gets to hold Heidi and crying when Heidi doesn’t want whoever is holding her.

But when she DOES want you, it feels so so good.

We went to the library for the first time since she came home in September. All the girls were happy about this. I was delighted to take her to an unfamiliar place to see her reaction. She walked towards the play area but looked back at me for reassurance before walking in. There were a fair amount of kids in there and she came quickly back out and reached her arms up to me to pick her up.

These small things are great gains in our communication efforts. She had speech therapy every-other week now and we are being reminded that before she even uses sign language or speaks that she will learn to gesture. Attempting communication with a 2-year-old is difficult in the best circumstances but even more so with a developmentally delayed, English as a second language child. When I remind myself of those things I am comforted by the great strides we have made. While I would love to hear her repeating words or signing her needs and desires we just aren’t there yet.

Perhaps the greatest strides we made this month are with food. She started chewing on Tuesday, February 21. She chewed bites of strawberry first. Then bites of chicken salad. Then for dinner that night she ate rice and poppyseed chicken. We were completely amazed. Not everyday is good and we still have to work on getting her to feed herself and eat crunchy things, we are amazed at what she CAN do.

We celebrated my 35th birthday and I was happy that she DID crunch some Cheerios mixed with infant cereal. What a gift these girls are to me.

We celebrated Chinese New Year with friends who also have four biological children and two girls adopted from China. It was so good to connect with them and be able to relate in unique ways. Heidi even ate some pork fried rice.

(Aren’t they sweet in their Chinese dresses?)

Here she is with another huge miracle. Holding a toy with both hands. She carried that giraffe around, switched it from hand-to-hand, dropped it, picked it back up, and even grabbed it tight to pull it out of Ruth’s mouth. Heidi’s miracles are small but amazing to us. We are so grateful for these glimpses of hope for her future.

She picked up a cheerio and put it in her mouth. Granted, she spit the cheerio out but still, progress!

She got very interested in bubbles this month. One day she ate spaghetti and bites of meatballs. In fact, she has started eating so regularly just about everything that we eat that I stopped writing it down.

She has been holding Trents fingers really tight. Guys, I know that this is something newborn babies do as a reflex but it is all so new for her. We are celebrating her victories.

The sweetest daddy and daughter 🥰

There are a bunch of things I don’t have photos of so you’ll have to bear with me as I explain.

Heidi grabbed her bear cup by the straw, put it in her mouth and drank! While looking at a book with Anne she saw a monkey and said, “Ahh-Ahh!”. She said “na-na” which didn’t mean anything but that was a sound we have never heard her make. She washed her own belly with a washcloth. She signed “all done” after me after lunch one day. Most of these things she has done only once or twice so unfortunately they aren’t consistent behaviors just yet.

But this. This she did a few times so I was able to get photos.

Holding the spoon!!!!

Getting yogurt onto the spoon!! (I did have to tilt the bowl to help her get it on the spoon).

Feeding herself!!!! I was so overly enthusiastic about this. You have no idea how loud it was in our home that day at lunch. I’ve said from before we brought Heidi home that she’s got the best five big sisters to cheer her on to greatness, and cheer we did this day. Oh, the joy.

Unfortunately we feel like we’ve lost progress this past week as sickness has swept through our home. Heidi ended up having an ear infection and nearly had pneumonia. We got her started on some antibiotics but when she isn’t feeling well she pretty much refuses to eat anything but purées.

Ruth has the great idea of putting these suspenders on Heidi one day.

It was one of the cutest things ever.

We’re learning more about Heidi’s personality each day. She prefers to wake slowly from her nap. Typically she naps from 2-5 pm but recently she has started playing (!!) in her crib so she isn’t falling asleep until later. Then it might be 5:30 or almost 6 and we’re waking her and instantly trying to give her dinner. That goes poorly. So we’ve started trying to go into her room around 5:20 and one of the older girls or I (unless I’m making dinner) will sit in there with her until she’s ready to get out of bed. Usually this takes 20 minutes.

Abbey did a great job calming Heidi down early one morning when I couldn’t get her to stop crying.

In truth, sometimes I feel a little discouraged that she isn’t doing more or learning things more quickly. But then I remember how the fact that she is even alive is a miracle. I’m strengthened to keep working hard with her and fighting for her because her life is valuable. She is a gift from God and her life matters.

She also had her eye exam follow up this month. Her prescription is -1.5. The doctor felt this was not so bad (since she can see clearly a common distance in which people stand to talk and she isn’t yet reading a chalk board) to warrant the stress that keeping glasses on her will cause our family. Since Heidi has sensory challenges I really appreciated his care in this matter. We will follow up in 6 months and depending on her prescription and how improved her sensory disorder is, she will likely be getting glasses. If not then, definitely sometime in the future.