Half a Year with Mary Jubilee

Half a year! It’s been a hard six months. I have been humbled and challenged and felt as though I was knocked on my butt and been scrambling to get back up and continue the race of life since she was born. 

Mary & her little lamb 

None of this is a reflection of who Mary Jubilee is. She is a fighter. She was in and out of the NICU faster than any of her siblings. She was faced with the challenge of a mama who wasn’t at her best. Mary learned to bottle feed, she tried valiantly to breastfeed, exhausting herself with hour long feeds. She worked harder and longer to achieve what comes relatively easily for many babies. While we rarely breastfeed now, we have developed a precious bond which I feared we wouldn’t achieve without it. 

Miss Mary is truly lovely. She gives the best, big smiles. She squeals and laughs and has developed a sweet personality. She has become laid back, which she really wasn’t as a wee newborn. But she has gone to countless medical appointments, hospital for Ruth’s transfusions, ballet classes, art classes, school pickup and drop off, chiropractor appointments, therapies for Heidi, and so much more without batting an eye. She naps in her bouncy seat in front of the fire when we’re home, or in her car seat when we’re on the go. Mary sleeps in her crib all night, usually 12 hours. She’s still in our room so we do give her the pacifier sometimes in the night if she fusses, but in general she does fantastic. 

I noticed this change when she started eating solid foods. It’s interesting that she took so well to eating solids since drinking has been the biggest difficulty for her. She is a very good eater and we’ve found Plum Organics baby foods to be healthy and nutritious. She’s gaining weight better than ever and getting stronger. As I am finally finishing this post she’s nearer to 7 months but she’s sitting up well and for longer stretches of time. She is rolling over both ways. She is scooting around on her belly, trying so hard to get what is just out of reach. I can tell she’s going to put everything into her mouth like Hans did so the girls are in for another time of lots of cleaning up the floors. 

Hanging with one of her favorite sisters 

She is just a real sweetie. She’s sleeping in my arms as I type this. I finally feel like we’re on our way to thriving, not just surviving. 

I have heard it said that if you’re not sure if you should have another baby that you’ll never regret having one more, but you very likely will regret that you didn’t. 

I feel this about Miss Mary. Many would have expected us to stop after we finally had a boy. But for us, it has never been about the gender of our children, and always about the gift that each child is. I know I would have regretted stopping after Hans. I feel so content with our family. While my days are jam packed, I acknowledge the blessings in each day and I am exceedingly grateful that I’m alive to have hard days. 

I love you, Mary!

Heidi is 6!

In September Heidi celebrated her 4 year adoption anniversary and in November she turned six! 

Heidi is still a puzzle to us. She is still mostly nonverbal. She can say a few words but rarely says them unprompted. She knows some sign language. We recently (after her birthday) decided to try AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) in the form of a tablet/iPad. There’s a huge learning curve but we’ve found some success with it. We mostly use it to teach Heidi how to request something she wants (which song) and she’s doing surprisingly well recognizing the icon and that it represents a thing that she wants. I would be delighted if it could eventually help her to express her feelings and even  just general commenting on what’s going on or what she likes. 

Her comprehension of language is quite strong. She knows what we’re saying and talking about. She can follow directions. Today I asked her to get Mary’s bottle off the stool in the living room and bring it to me so I could wash it. And she did! She may have first tried to toss it on the counter but with a second prompt she got it to me. 

I’ve been working on several preschool skills with her over the last several months. She knows all her colors and will sign them or give a verbal attempt at the word. She recognizes the letters in her name and can sometimes put them in the correct order. She knows animal names and sounds. I have started working on teacher the alphabet to her and Hans. Hans is certainly much more enthusiastic about it than Heidi but I know she’s capable of learning and I want to encourage her to new heights. 

However, she is still very much a challenge. She has behaviors that are difficult to control. Currently she cannot seem to help herself with touching things she knows she’s not supposed to. She stands on the couch and knocks around the pictures hanging on the wall. When I say her name she looks at me, shakes her head and says “no, no. No.” But continues the behavior. She also has been throwing everything, knocking all the stools over, and dipping her hair in her food but only if it’s soup or liquidy. It gets exhausting. 

She has joined a creative movement class at Doris Ann’s Dance Studio. I’m incredibly grateful that they’re open to accepting children of all abilities. Carrie is her personal helper during the class. She guides Heidi, keeps her on task, and provides additional verbal assistance and reminders to Heidi. She does a beautiful job of allowing Heidi space to dance and explore, but also maintaining order. I’m amazed at the growth I’ve seen in Heidi. She began the year with just standing in one place during the worship free-dance to now waving her worship sashes and dancing around the room. It certainly wouldn’t be possible without Carrie’s assistance. 

In the fall Heidi will have to start Kindergarten. I’ve been in prayer about what this may look like for her and our family. I currently plan to homeschool her but I often doubt my capacity to do it well in the midst of teaching everyone else. But I also can’t imagine what sending her to school would look like for her. 

Heidi was sick at Christmas with pneumonia. She was quite ill and became extremely attached to Trent. He was her main caretaker during that time as I was caring for Ruth and Mary who also had pneumonia and still trying to make Christmas magical for the rest of the kids. Heidi loves for Trent to pick her up and toss her in the air and catch her. She gives him unsolicited hugs and searches him out during the day. 

As exhausting as it can be to care for her, we love her deeply for who she is. I believe she is capable of so many things. I just pray I can be the best mom possible to help her reach her full potential. 

Happy belated birthday, Heidi Grace. I love you!

Mary is Four Months

Little Miss Mary Jubilee is four months old!

She is finally growing and getting sweet round cheeks and a double chin. She is smiling, cooing, and has a bright twinkle in her eye.

I promise you, today she laughed. 

She is a very particular baby and loves mom best of all. I won’t complain about it though because someday I won’t be her favorite and I’ll hold on to and treasure the time that I was. 

(She liked the snow and fell asleep in the carrier)

Mary does actually often calm down for Ruth. And she smiles a lot at Carrie and Maggie. And she watches Heidi and Hans (Heaven help us!). Anne and Abbey offer their attentions when they get home from school, but mostly it’s mom and Mary. 

Ruth LOVES carrying Mary around. It makes me a *tiny* bit nervous but she’s always very careful and I can tell she’s so proud to be big enough to hold her. 

She had her first Christmas and wore the Christmas dress I bought for Anne in 2007; hard to believe that dress has hung around for 16 years and is being worn again. It’ll be difficult to begin parting with some of those treasured items. 

It’s never dull over here, though sometimes I feel I could use a boring month or two. 

Mary (and Heidi and Ruth) had pneumonia over Christmas and needed a round of antibiotics. Mary’s only symptom was an occasional cough that sounded horrible. 

I have been waking her at 3 am to feed her since she was about 7.5 weeks. She had slept through the night at that young age but since she was so small and barely gaining weight it was recommended to wake her in the night until we felt she could make up that missed feeding throughout the day. Last week she didn’t go back to sleep after the 3 am feeding two nights in a row and that was no fun for me. I decided to give it a try and let her sleep the whole night. I have a tremendous fear of not having enough milk for her so  I still get up and pump at 3 am and store it for her to drink later. I pump about 6 times per day and that gives her enough to drink fresh all day and sometimes a little extra to have in the fridge. I haven’t been able to store any in the freezer for a long time. She did surprise me the other day when I was nursing her and let go of the nipple shield and latched and ate perfectly for 2 feeds. I was so excited I thought maybe we would be good from now on. Sadly that wasn’t the case the next day and she didn’t latch well at all. But I’m celebrating any little wins we get along the way and recognizing the gift that bottling is during this intense season of mothering. 

Since I didn’t get a chance to blog her at 3 months, those are some of my favorite pictures from month 3. 

Love you Miss Mary! I am excited to watch your personality blossom. 

Oh, and she is getting stronger and loves to sit up in her high chair and see what’s happening at the table 

Anne is 16!

In early November Anne turned 16 years old. It’s surreal that I have a child who is on the cusp of adulthood. Sixteen is a great, if complex, age; old enough to begin to understand the challenges of their rapidly approaching adulthood but young enough to still enjoy their fleeting childhood. 

While this year has ramped up in intensity the amount of daily appointments, errands, and activities, I wanted to make Anne’s 16th birthday celebration very special. She and her friends are very interested in house plants, so I came up with the idea of a succuelent planting party. Throughout the summer, anytime we were out thrifting we looked for interesting and beautiful containers. The end result was 12 really fun and unique pieces. 

Since Anne skipped a grade most of her friends can drive so they drove over to our house after their half day of school. The girls ate, chatted, sang, laughed and all of it was done at a high volume. They were a delightful group of girls, much better teenagers than Trent or I were. 

Anne continues to enjoy and be extremely gifted at art. She is considering what she would like to do in the future, and art education has risen to the top of her career choices. While she would love to be a book illustrator we are walking the balance of encouraging a talented child but also being practical about the cost of college and the career options available with your degree. The balance of guidance and encouragement is a new and tricky one we’re trying to navigate. 

Anne also enjoys reading. She has always been good at it and it came easily to her. Anne is also funny: she currently has a voice that makes me laugh literally everytime she says anything in it. She’s good at using it to diffuse my irritation. 

Teaching a teen to drive is more nerve wracking than I expected. Most of the time she does great, until she doesn’t. It will take some time but I’m looking forward to having another driver in the house!

Happy sweet 16, Anne! We love you! I still owe her a coffee date that I hope to do soon. 

Mary is Two Months

Miss Mary Jubilee is two months old. It’s been another month of difficulty. My optimism for the way things were going in our feeding journey at the end of month one was a bit premature. 

Hans loves her so much! He calls her Mare-me, and Piddy drl (pretty girl)

I thought we had turned a corner. Unfortunately, it seemed like she would have 4 days in a row where she could nurse well, and then 2 days where it was as if she’d never breastfed in her life and couldn’t latch. 

After a long stretch of her inability to latch I was feeling depressed. I had done a lot of crying and felt like a prisoner chained to the wall in my room via breast pump. Then my mother-in-law mentioned a hands free cordless pump that my cousin by marriage is using. That was the first step in helping my mental state. Then I saw a lactation consultant who gave me some valuable help with latching. We started using a specific nipple shield, and worked on positioning and stretching. She discovered Mary has significant tightness on one side which would make it uncomfortable for her to turn her head to one side. I was alarmed that Mary had not gained much weight and so the lactation consultant helped me develop a strategy for helping Mary. We breastfeed first and concentrate on a good deep latch. She usually nurses for 30 minutes on her easy side. Since I really don’t have the luxury of sitting all day to feed her, I’ve been pumping on the other side while she eats. Then I bottle feed her an additional ounce. Mary had also started sleeping through the night at 7.5 weeks old but the lactation consultant crushed my happy sleeping by telling me that babies receive about 1/3 of the calories in their night feeding. Since Mary needs those calories I wake her at 3 am to feed her. The first couple times I breastfed her but she began getting furious at being woken so now I pump and she can sleep while she drinks a bottle of fresh milk. 

(She does the biggest yawns!)

Mary just had her 2 month check and weighed 6 lbs 13 ounces, a gain of 9 ounces this month. Height had no change at 20.5 inches. Her regular doctor was out sick so we saw the nurse practitioner. She was concerned that Mary’s belly was quite distended. We’re keeping a close eye on that as well and will follow up with our regular doctor at month three. 

Ruth loves to hold baby Mary! 

Mary also saw the chiropractor and had a big adjustment. She certainly wasn’t happy to have that tightness worked on but we have the best chiropractor (Dr. Sonja Powers of Lifestyle Chiropractic and Wellness in Willow Street) who has done miracles for several of my children. 

Some of her feeding and weight issues have felt so overwhelming that I’ve had less time to simply enjoy the sweetness of a newborn. With our other babies I was able to trust my body and baby working together. Trent has reminded me that the Lord may be trying to teach me something through all of this. My instant response was that I didn’t want to learn anything new. 

Still got that newborn scrunch. 

Romans 5:3-5 says “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Hans kissing her fingers is too cute. 

While my current suffering is nothing compared to what some of my friends are experiencing at this moment (cancer, eye surgery, mother in hospice, death of their baby) it is still something challenging that impacts my daily life, especially with an already busy schedule. And the Lord is teaching me new things. I’m willing to humble myself and learn. Learn that I don’t know everything about babies, that I am weak and he is strong, that He really does love me and will lift me up.

Daddy and Mary look like they’re having a serious conversation. 

My goal for Mary in month three is to be intentional to enjoy these snuggles with our last baby. I hope that I’ll be less stressed by the things I cannot control and revel in the miracle of a new baby. I’m looking forward to seeing true smiles this next month. 

An almost smile! Happy 2 months tiny baby! We love you Miss Mary Jubilee! 

I love her big eyes. I’m so interested to find if they will stay blue or change color. She has pretty bad cradle cap and is losing the hair on top of her head. I’ve been working on the cradle cap with my lavender hydrosol followed up with my lavender infused oil and a cradle cap brush. Mary loves this routine, but who wouldn’t love a nice head massage before bed?! No wonder she could sleep through the night. 

Even though she’s not smiling she always has such a beautiful, pleasant look as if she’s about to smile. I’ve no doubt month 3 will be full of gorgeous smiles and her siblings will be fighting over who makes her smile the most. 

Maggie is 13!

Another teenager! Maggie turned 13 in August. I’m glad I am so delayed in writing this as I can celebrate the growth I’ve seen in her since becoming the OAH (Oldest Available Hess) with both Anne and Abbey at Linville this year.

Maggie & cousin Georgia at Muddy Run, July 2023

To go back to August, we got to have a very fun pool party for her birthday. We don’t do parties every year since there are so many kids in the family. We try to do a party for “big” birthdays: 1, 5, 10, 13, and 16. It just so happens we have three big birthdays this year, and Maggie’s party kicked off our celebration of life. 

Maggie is the toddler whisperer. Whenever there’s a preschool age kiddo you can usually find her there. Sometimes I think Hans thinks Maggie is his mom and he would choose her over me. 

Sadly it was shockingly and unseasonably cold for her pool party but that didn’t stop the kids from swimming. We rented the pool for 2 hours and it was the easiest birthday party I’ve ever hosted. Probably because it didn’t matter how messy I left my house. I made all of Maggie’s requested desserts. Actually, she and Abbey made the one everyone liked the best (and the two of them happened to win 1st place in a baked French toast competition at church recently). 

Maggie continues to enjoy art. She won two second place ribbons at the Lampeter fair this year for her drawings as well as a first place for a hand sewn doll. 

She has taken on a tremendous role in our family this year. With five younger siblings, including a brother who is totally obsessed with her and a newborn sister, she has many duties at home. She has her school work to attend to, but also babysits for me several times per week as our other kiddos have many appointments and Heidi has ballet weekly on Tuesday mornings. 

I wanted to encourage Maggie to try a new sport or some activity to get her with her peers and making friends. She is uninterested in sports, but as I mentioned, loves art. I remembered a Christian woman in the southern end posting on a homeschool page about an art class with a Christ-centered approach. I knew I was late in asking but wanted to reach out to see if she had space for this school year or if I should wait. It seemed God ordained that she had one space remaining in her Art 101 class of all girls and that if Maggie wanted to join she needed to the next week or it would be too far into the year for her to catch up. It also “happened” to be the only day consistently open on my calendar. So we went for it. Yes, it has made my schedule busier for the rest of the year: however, I recognize what I’m asking of her everyday is a lot for a 13-year-old. Her two older sisters are quite jealous that they didn’t get an art class when they were homeschooled and helping me, but the truth is I hadn’t thought of it. I wish I had as an alternative to participating in a sport. 

(How Maggie can often be found)

A recent painting.

We love you Maggie! I’m so proud of you and extremely grateful for all you do for me so uncomplainingly. I’m impressed with your growth of character already this year. You’re such a special part of our family and I’m thankful you were born.