Hess Happenings: Eight Months Home with Ruthie V.

Another month home with Miss Ruth. She continues to be a source of joy in our home. Now, more than ever, she is vocalizing her opinions on everything. While we can usually grasp what she is telling us if we know the context, it can still be a struggle to know what she is saying to Trent at the end of the day as each girl tells him what they did that day.

I had been away for the weekend alone (what? Amazing, right?) and I got her up from her nap when I got back. She was so happy to see me and saying, “Mama, mama!” Then, she said “eee-eee, ih (and stuck out her tongue) mah annn (and pointed to her hand).

And I questioned, “Petey licked your hand?” And she said, “yeah!” And laughed. Obviously this would have been really hard for anyone who doesn’t know her well to understand, but we are really thrilled with her communication between words, signs, and gestures. If you’ve met her you know she has a lot to say to the world. We have had a few speech therapy sessions and I believe they are already starting to help. I have to remind myself that speech is a marathon, not a sprint. And slow and steady progress will lead us to great places.

So what did Ruthie do this month?

She enjoyed a New Year’s trip down to Virginia to stay with our best friends!

Jack met us at the door wearing his Chinese outfit we got him and welcoming us with, “Ni Hao!” It was the cutest.

Roo and Care continue to be BFFs. Here they’re enjoying a hot cocoa after playing in the snow.

Ruthie is giving Caroline a piggy back ride up the stairs to get dressed. Hah!

It has been really sweet to watch Ruth’s interest in babies grow this past month. She has been creatively playing quite a bit these days.

She likes to pretend to drive this sleigh outside grandpa and grandma Hess’s house.

And obviously, baby needs a forkful of sour cream. Guys. We have a major sour cream addiction in our house. I’m not even sorry about it.

The hardest thing she did this month was separate from each other for 2.5 hours during Bible Study. While I have left her other times it was always with a family member. This was different because it was a class of 3-year-olds with teachers she didn’t know. It was helpful to leave Caroline in the same class and I’m thankful the teachers made an exception to allow them to be together. The next time I left her she still cried when I dropped her off but did even better in the class and seemed her normal self when I picked her up. The first time it seemed to take her a couple days to get back to normal.

And reading books together can’t be beat.

I loved this so much! We sat and watched a Torch Lighters (highly recommend!) about Gladys Alyward, the British missionary who went to China and did many, many amazing things for teaching the gospel.

Checking out the seed catalog and dreaming of spring (already).

Ruthie has wanted her big sisters to put her down for her naps this month. Abbey has been the sister of choice most days. It is really precious to watch Abbey read, sing, and mother Ruthie. These are some of my favorite parts of having a big family and raising future homemakers.

She is very independent! She will do it herself over accepting help 99% of the time.

Snow shoveling is a spectator sport in our house. Hah! Actually, it was very windy otherwise she likes to be out with me.

Caroline had to get in a chair as well.

The next week we had a beautiful, sunny day and I couldn’t even get them to wear coats. Oh, and Care is crying because Roo has the big stroller, which she only has because Carrie had the small stroller first and Ruth also wanted a stroller to push her baby but we have only one small stroller. And obviously, Carrie wanted the big stroller after Ruth had it. Various scenarios like this happen to us on a regular basis. I just laugh and call it “life with girls”.

Rocking chairs, rocking babies. It’s the best life.

The face they make when I switch the camera to “selfie”. Haha! I love these girls!

She was so happy that she moved into 12-18 month shirts (she will turn 3 years old in 3 months). Girlfriend LOVES new clothes, and I love that I had 4 girls before her so she has lots of options of “new” clothes. She is still stuck in 12 month pants but she’ll grow more eventually.

We continue to be grateful for our sweet, energetic, hilarious, tiny but mighty girl.

And just for fun, scroll through the below images to see how hard it was to get a cute picture without a fake smile of our busy Ruthie V.