Would you believe that our little star turned ONE on Monday?! That officially makes this the latest I have ever been to tell a name story. And I LOVE telling name stories, so you know I’ve been busy!

It was my name first, Gilbert, and my father’s before me and his father’s before that. My maiden name. I never cared for it growing up. I knew it only as a nerdy name from a movie I should never have seen so young (don’t judge me, things were different in the eighties!)

In college, I was introduced to Anne of Green Gables and began to see my name in a different light, or at least to realize that others did. It still took me until at least our 4th baby to take it seriously as a first name possibility.

Meanwhile, the name Gus was there all along. Living in Scotland, where Anguses and Ferguses abound, I fell in love with the name Gus when I was pregnant with Romilly 18 years ago. Trevor remained ambivalent on Gus through the years, no matter which full name I might suggest. His favorite boy name for all those years was Barnaby, which I loved, too, but didn’t feel quite brave enough to use, especially after we moved to the States. We were pretty solidly gridlocked, so it was a good thing we kept having girl after girl after girl!

I first suggested the combo Gilbert Barnabas, Gus for short, when I was expecting Verity in 2016 (I know this, I’m embarrassed to admit, because I keep records of such things!) I don’t remember how it was received then, but I know it wasn’t the name we ended up choosing for her if she’d been a boy. Sometimes Trevor needs to simmer for a long time!

The name Gilbert means “bright pledge.” Daniel 12: 3 says, “And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” My prayer for little Gus is that his life would shine brightly in this world and cause many to glorify God.

Barnabas, like Barnaby, means “son of encouragement.” A perfect meaning for this little son of ours who seems to bring a smile to the face of everyone he meets. And while it isn’t quite the name that Trevor pined for all those years, it does end in -us and so nicely closes the loop on the whole Gilbert-nickname-Gus situation.

Milo’s pregnancy was the first time Trevor actually agreed to the combo Gilbert Barnabas, but as you can probably tell, that is not Milo’s name. You can read that story here.

Gus was both desperately wanted and prayed for, and also a wonderful surprise. His pregnancy was different and stressful from the get-go. I think Trevor must have known that I needed the name not to be one more source of stress, because he let me have my way from the very beginning. When we received Gus’s Down syndrome diagnosis at 25 weeks pregnant, I asked if we could, for the first time in ten pregnancies, intentionally find out the gender ahead of time. (We found out with Freya as well, but quite by accident, and that’s a story for another time.)

The day we found out that Gus was a boy was a wonderful, hope-filled day, and we began calling him Gus and praying for him by name that very day.

A year later, I still look at him every day and pinch myself that I finally got my Gus. And, of course, that the name I’ve dreamed of using for so many years is attached to this boy.

I’ve often heard other women describe their labors as “short but intense”, and I’ve been a bit skeptical of how that could be worse than a labor that stops and starts and keeps you awake for three days, but still becomes very intense at the end, which is what several of mine have been like. I think now I understand.

Due to my age, my history of high blood pressure, and Gus’s Down syndrome diagnosis, I was scheduled to be induced on April 26th, when I would have been 38 weeks exactly. But all along, something told me that as soon as I reached 37 weeks, something would trigger a chain of events that would bring him sooner. With both Freya and Milo, I was induced due to high blood pressure, and the stress of knowing that was not helping my blood pressure to behave this time around. In the end, it was not my blood pressure that misbehaved, but a 24-hour urine sample with a bit of protein in it, signaling the early stages of preeclampsia.

Thankfully, the midwife who triaged me that Friday, April 21st, took pity on my situation and asked if I’d like to go home first and come in a few hours later (she shared with me a very amusing cautionary tale about another mom who was sent straight to her induction without going home first: her husband had packed her bag for her and included some rather unhelpful undergarments! But I had my own reasons for wanting to go home first…) That morning, my sister Chelsea had been visiting for what we knew would likely be our last double bump photo. She had stayed with the kids while I had my appointment, and I was able to go home and squeeze her one last time before heading to the hospital at around 5.

If you could see the scribbled prayer requests of the lovely ladies at my Bible study table at our last meeting on April 20th, you would see that I was specifically praying to go into labor on my own and not need to be induced. That very afternoon, (warning, TMI labor details ahead…) I began to have some mild contractions and lose my mucus plug. The next day, during the few hours I had at home in between my appointment and going back to the hospital for my induction, I continued to have some very mild contractions, and my water broke! This was one of so many specific answers to prayer surrounding Gus’s arrival that I know I will not even remember to list them all, but this one felt huge, because it was more than a week earlier than I had ever gone into labor on my own.

Because of my head start on labor, when I arrived for my induction, the team decided to skip the early step I had had with Freya’s and Milo’s inductions (a drug called cytotec used to soften the cervix) and go straight to pitocin to bring on stronger contractions. My nurse started pitocin at about 7:45 pm.

There was no midwife on call on the overnight shift that began shortly after we arrived. That may be part of why this induction was so different from my other two inductions, which lasted 48 and 36 hours. While I was bracing myself for a long, slow labor like my others, my nurse began turning my pitocin up and up and up again. By 10 pm I could tell I wasn’t coping nearly as well as I usually do in early labor. I struggled through the next hour of long, intense contractions two minutes apart, and finally called my nurse in a tearful panic.

I told her this didn’t feel like my other labors, and that I wasn’t coping well at this level of pitocin. Thankfully, she listened to me. She told me she trusted my judgement, because I had done this so many times before. She suggested stopping the pitocin completely for an hour to give me a rest and see what my body would do on its own, and she told me she’d be back at midnight to check on me.

But that rest never came, and neither did my nurse! The contractions spaced out to 3 or 4 minutes apart, but they stayed strong. By midnight I was very ready for my nurse to come back and check on me. I was coping better, but still feeling like I’d need some pain relief if I still had a whole night or more of hard labor ahead of me. We could hear the delivery happening down the hall that kept my nurse from returning at midnight when she said she would (and the sounds coming from that mother were not doing anything to help my state of mind!) At 1AM I finally pushed the button and called for my nurse. A different nurse came and told me the doctor was working her way along and would come check me soon. I felt a little scared, and really wanted someone to stay with me, but there was a lot happening down the hall, so the nurse left me to wait for the doctor.

At 1:15 the doctor finally came. I was 4 almost 5 cm. I asked her to go over my pain options with me. I asked about the morphine-type drug that would help me get some sleep. She explained that it carried a risk to baby if I delivered while it was still in my system, which it would be for about 3-4 hours. I turned to Trevor and said, “Then I want the epidural.” It was not something I had ever said to him while in labor before. I’m not sure what he thought at the time, he told me later that he believed it was God’s direct protection of Gus that I chose not to have the other drug, even though I had had before in a couple of my other labors with no ill effects. I had no idea how close I was to delivering. It would certainly still have been in his little system when he was born, which could have caused him to be born with respiratory issues.

The anaesthesiologist came in a few minutes later to discuss the epidural with me, and I told him I wanted it. By about 1:45 he was back with his supplies and ready to give me some relief. I sat hunched over a pillow while the catheter was placed in my back. While I had been waiting for the anaesthesiologist, and especially while he was placing the epidural, I felt my contractions change. Part of me must have known what was coming, because I remember asking how long it would take the meds to kick in and feeling a bit disheartened when he said fifteen minutes.

My notes state that the catheter was in place at 1:57 AM (about 45 minutes after the doctor told me I was “almost 5 cm”). At this point, as the doctor was beginning to put the drugs into the catheter, while I was still hunched over sitting on the bed, I instinctively tried to push myself up off the bed a bit with my hands. The anaesthesiologist and the nurse both yelled at me not to move or touch my back (I wasn’t trying to!).

At this point I became fully aware of what was happening and started yelling, “he’s coming! I think he’s out!!!” I don’t think anyone believed me at first, but after a few seconds of my freaking out, the nurse told me to lie down and Trevor sort of tipped me on my side. Gus flopped out onto the bed and shocked everyone in the room. His birth time was recorded as 2 AM exactly, and the anaesthesiologist’s name was recorded as the delivering doctor. He was the only person in the room qualified to deliver a baby.

The OB who had checked me less than an hour earlier heard the commotion from the hall and rushed in. The nurse (still not MY nurse) was trying to cut the cord and asked the doctor to pass her the instruments she needed, but since their roles were usually reversed, no one quite seemed to know what to do. Trevor and I were just laughing and crying at the whole situation while the team of NICU doctors looked our little man over. He was perfect!

Meanwhile, the anaesthesiologist, who seemed mildly irritated by the whole situation, commented, “Well, you won’t be needing this” and pulled my catheter back out 🙂

Although his actual birth was probably my easiest (no stitches for the first time ever, and I don’t even think I actually pushed), that couple of hours of crazy contractions that I *thought* would last for the next 12 hours or so were some of the hardest labor, physically and mentally, that I’ve ever experienced. “Short but intense” is definitely a real thing!

The next morning, my midwife Kathleen came to visit. We were both so disappointed that she hadn’t gotten to deliver Gus. She was the one who counseled me through my early worries of low progesterone. She delivered the news of Gus’s extra chromosome when I was in my second trimester. And she knew him by name by the time we were having weekly third trimester visits. By the end, she had become a trusted friend, and I am thankful for the part she played in his birth, even if it wasn’t at the main event.

Most of all, I am thankful for the Lord’s kindness to us in every part of Gus’s arrival and life so far. One more baby. At my age! Pregnant along with my sisters. With another boy. With Down syndrome, and a perfect, healthy heart. He came just barely full term, but left me plenty of time to recover before Trevor’s sister and family came to visit in May. Gus is an absolute joy, and his siblings and mommy and daddy adore him.

“The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed I have a beautiful inheritance.”

Psalm 16:6 ESV

He’s here! Introducing Gilbert Barnabas, Gus for short.

He’s actually been here for quite a while. Gus arrived on April 22, 2023, just over a month ago. (I will tell you all about his arrival in another post.) So many prayers were answered, including that we were both able to come home from the hospital together just two days after he was born. I almost got a chance to write a post about him, but then just a couple days later a low temperature reading at his check up sent us back to the ER and ultimately landed is in the NICU.

We had a four-day stay for some warming and oxygen support, and we were so grateful to be able to go home when we did.

On the first night of our hospital stay, Gus received a tentative diagnosis of transient myeloproliferative disease, a pre-cancerous condition that is very common among newborns with Down syndrome and potentially very dangerous. We googled, we cried, we prayed, and we all held our breath. By the next day when we finally met with the hematologist, there was absolutely no trace of the offending blast cells in his bloodwork. We may never know if his diagnosis was a false positive or if his TMD just resolved very quickly (it often does), but either way, prayers were mightily answered for our tiny boy.

He is home now and keeping me busy with pumping and round the clock supplemental feeding, but for all that, he is thriving! We are so in love, and so happy that he is here. The world is a better place with Gus in it.

Well, friends, do you want to guess what has kept me from my blog these five months? I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t the first time that I’ve been quiet because I’ve been sitting on a secret.

When my sister was expecting her last baby in 2021, she joked that I needed to jump on the bandwagon with her. I joked back that at my age I couldn’t keep up with her, but I’d catch her on the next lap. By then, we reasoned, my other sister would be about ready to have her second baby, and all of us could be pregnant together!

Then in early 2022, I suffered an early miscarriage (my 4th in total, with the first being 20 years ago, before Pippa). With that loss, I grieved not only that precious little one (we had imagined, specifically, a baby brother for Milo), but the end of an era. At my age, it seemed very unlikely that we would have another baby, and although I was (and am!) so thankful and blessed with the children we have, it felt like a hard way to end things.

In late September, we were absolutely thrilled to discover I was expecting again! But I dared not trust it this time. A few weeks into a very panicky first trimester, a dear friend who works at a pregnancy center offered to do an ultrasound for me. She found, to my surprise and relief, a perfect little beating heart in a tiny human that was a FULL MONTH older than what I had calculated! In an instant, I went from a very shaky and uncertain 8-week pregnancy to a well -established, almost-second-trimester 12-week one. I was overwhelmed by the Lord’s kindness, but it wasn’t going to be the last time this pregnancy.

Let me just jump to the spoiler here:

What a gift to be sharing my last pregnancy with both of my married sisters! Paige (in the middle) is due the day after me in May (although if our track records are anything to go by, I will likely go a couple weeks before her!), and Chelsea (on the end) is due in July. We are all so excited to meet these dear little cousins!

And now for the last miracle (so far) of this pregnancy: about six weeks ago we found out through NIPT bloodwork that our little one has Down syndrome. Earlier bloodwork had given us about a 1 in 10 chance, but then our ultrasound showed none of the physical markers for Ds, so I put it out of my mind.

The day I got the call that the diagnosis was (almost) certain, I would like to tell you that I was completely unfazed, but that wouldn’t be true. The diagnosis didn’t scare me. How could it when I have seen first hand what a blessing that extra chromosome is?

But the pregnancy/birth/baby part of the Down syndrome journey is new to me. I knew there would be medical uncertainties. And I knew one thing that would be a certainty was appointments. Lots of them. And therapies. And things that have become a normal part of my life, but that I didn’t know would be part of my life for this baby. I had a weepy, overwhelmed few days of sharing our news with close friends and family. I knew I would be okay, but I wasn’t okay yet.

On the Monday after the Wednesday that we got the news, I had a fetal echocardiogram to take a look at baby’s heart, since about 50% of babies born with Ds also have some type of heart condition. I had said to Trevor back when the diagnosis was just an outside chance that if we did find out the baby had Ds, I would want to know the gender as well, so that we could pray for baby by name. I’m not sure he remembers me saying that, but I did, and he agreed, and it was binding! So going into this ultrasound, I had decided to ask the sonographer to take a peek at the gender for us as well, if she was able to do that.

This whole appointment was so healing and wonderful. Baby’s heart looked absolutely perfect, as far as we can tell so far, and the sonographer also took a peek down below and sent me home with a secret envelope so that we could all find out together as a family at home. The doctor I consulted with after the ultrasound was herself the mother of a child with special needs, and she was able to answer so many of my questions and put my mind at ease about so many things.

That evening, when everyone was home, Bea and Junie built a gender reveal Lego fortress, which we asked my mom to fill with the right colored Lego baby based on the contents of the secret envelope. And what do you think?

It’s a boy!!! I was flooded with an overwhelming sense that everything about this baby is exactly as God intended it, that He still hears and answers my prayers, and that He is writing an amazing story in all of our lives. I cannot wait to meet this boy!

Today is World Down Syndrome Day (3/21 for 3 copies of the 21st chromosome), and I feel privileged, chosen, and blessed to be the mother of three boys with that miraculous extra chromosome. Stay tuned for more miracles!

The last time we saw Trevor’s parents, Freya was not quite one year old, and Milo wasn’t even a twinkle in my eye. They had had a flight booked for May 2020 that COVID postponed indefinitely. We Zoomed often, and I’m thankful for the technology that kept them familiar faces to our kids, but it’s definitely not the same as real life cuddles.

This month, we’ve finally had that!

Starting at the end of October, we enjoyed a lovely visit with Trevor’s parents and brother. The last week of that we spent on a tiny island in Maryland, surrounded by water, a million miles from anywhere.

The kids kayaked in the bay right in our backyard. We played card games, went for walks, crocheted. We saw bald eagles in the wild, and explored the historical sites of the area. It was a full, lovely week.

Now we are home and settling back into school and routines. Gran and Grandad and Uncle Adrian have all gone home. Life is back to normal. But normal is pretty sweet, too.

Today was my birthday. It was a lovely day, if fairly ordinary. I opened a few presents from my mom and the kids this morning in my PJs, went for a (very slow!) 4.5-mile run in honor of turning 45 (!?) today, and did a science lesson with the little kids before lunch. Trevor called on his lunch break just to chat. After lunch we had a nice visit from a friend and the two little ones she nannies for. Romilly made me a delicious on-plan peanut butter cheesecake, and my mom brought me Chick-fil-A for dinner. Trevor and Niko left for our church’s men’s retreat while I did the AWANA run. We wrapped up the night with popcorn and a movie for the big kids. Sweet.

The fact that today is my birthday turned my attention to my blog for two reasons: 1. I was reminded that my last post was about Coraline’s 10th birthday, and that yesterday she turned 11! That’s a long time to not blog. And 2. Having finished Coraline’s birthday present, a crocheted backpack, I now have time to blog again! At least for a little while 😉

Time fails me to give a full update on everyone, but I thought I’d give the big updates and sprinkle in some new pictures of the gang.

I’ll start at the top: Pippa is in college. College! She is living at home and commuting to a wonderful Christian school 10 minutes away, where she is studying to be an elementary school teacher. She is thriving, and I am so excited for her.

She also has a boyfriend! She did not meet him at college, but has actually known him for more than half her life. Their story is sweet and amazing, but I won’t tell it just yet. I wasn’t sure what the kids-in-relationships stage would look like, but it has been such a pleasant surprise.

Romilly is also going to the same Christian college two days a week as a dual enrollment student, as well as babysitting for my sister’s two babies one day a week (Bea watches them another day.) She has an English comp professor that she loves, and I am loving watching her spread her wings and pursue her passions.

Delia and I have been pursuing a new therapy for a little over a year. It is called the Sonrise program, and I believe it is helping her. I wish I had more hours in the day to give to it, but I love the time we spend together in the playroom each day, and I think she does, too. We realized when ABA started back up after COVID, that it was no longer serving her well, so we let it go and took a different tack. We have stepped back from focusing on skills and are now focusing on relationship, which is perhaps what we should have been focusing on all along.

The boys are all still homeschooled. Niko volunteers at least once a week at my mom’s thrift store where he is well loved and known as a hard worker. Lewis and Teddy are both making progress, each in their own way.

The other big girls (I daresay I have to put Coraline in this category now, too!) are so independent with their school work now that I sometimes forget who is home and who is out on any given day. It is definitely a new season of everyone having their own interests and pursuits. It’s busy, but in general things are fitting and everyone is thriving.

It’s been a very full year. We went to Kentucky back in April with Trevor’s brothers, and the summer brought its usual assortment of camping adventures.

Last month Trevor and I and the original five girls got to see one of our family’s favorite bands, The Gray Havens, in concert. Like, we seriously love this band, and I think it had been well over a decade since I had been to any concert, so we may have geeked out over it just a little bit.

I will leave you with a few pictures of our littlest family members for now, or else I will never get this posted. My birthday ended a couple hours ago, and these cuties will probably not get the memo that Mommy needs to sleep in tomorrow because she stayed up too late blogging!

I promised myself I would finish these posts while it is still 2021, and I only have two hours left, so I’d better get a move on!

Last but certainly not least, happy belated 10th birthday to Coraline (on October 13th)!

“Coraliney, sweet and tiny, glad you’re miney!” is a little song I still sometimes sing to my middle baby. Indeed, although there are now four Youngs tinier than Coraline, the nickname Tiny will forever be hers. She is the quintessential middle kid: respected by and often allowed to tag along with her older siblings, and but also much in demand by her younger siblings as a cool big kid.

She cheerfully gets up before me and most of the kids every morning, pours everyone’s breakfast juices and lays out the bowls for cereal, then she gently wakes me up with a baby or two in tow. I’ve never asked her to do this. She just saw a need and quietly started to fill it. She is a natural servant.

We chose Coraline’s name in part because of its connection to “cor”, the Latin word for heart. And does this girl ever have heart! She loves hard and unconditionally. When we moved to our new home two years ago, she asked if she could share a room with Delia (who doesn’t sleep all that well, and is sometimes loud while she’s not sleeping!) She still happily shares a room with her, and she had never once complained. Delia is just her sister, and she loves her.

She is fierce and fiery, quick to react to any injustice (real or perceived). She is arguably Niko’s best friend and his worst enemy. They make each other laugh like crazy, but they can’t sit next to each other in the van without fighting the entire way to church 😉

She throws herself wholeheartedly into everything she does: running, learning to play the guitar, crocheting, writing. I know this determination will serve her well in whatever she decides to pursue in life.

But oh, this girl is sweet, too! She gives me the best hugs (and her favorite kind are what she calls “eternal hugs” – you know: the really long ones!) She is always ready to help anyone, and she’s quick with a word of encouragement (especially to her weary mama at the end of a long day). She has an infectious smile and a million awesome faces. I just love her to pieces!

Coraline Audrey, I am so proud of the young lady you have become. I still think of you as little sometimes, and then I catch you out of the corner of my eye, and you are so grown and beautiful. May the Lord bless you in all that you do. Congrats on double digits, Tiny!

A belated 5th birthday to Verity! On the day of her birthday, October 5th, we were 9 miles away from the nearest internet access staying in our beloved Twin Fawn Cabin, so I wasn’t able to get her post done on time. As for the nearly three months since then, I have no excuse!

On little Vezzy’s birthday, we went on what was a much longer hike than we originally set out to do. She was a trooper, but a few miles in, she looked up at me with tears in her eyes and said, “Mommy, I thought we said a short walk!” Bless!

Miss Verity has increasingly become a big kid in a little kid package. Her sweet round face and little lispy voice make her still seem little, but she can hold her own in card games designed for kids 8 and up, and she’s picking up math and reading at an impressive pace this year as she works through kindergarten.

She loves to “help grandmom babysit” and has been known to make comments like, “Grandmom, could you keep an eye on Pippa for me while I go potty?”

Pippa has been Verity’s person since she was teeny tiny. She came out looking just like her biggest big sister, and still does today. She adores doing crafts and playing games with Pippa, and in the months since her birthday, Pippa has even taught her to knit! We love hearing her sweet voice recite, “Into the forest, around comes fox, out pops rabbit, and away they run!” again and again to remind herself of the steps of each stitch.

Her funny, sometimes irreverent commentary on life keeps us laughing but pretending not to. Recently my dad and step-mother stopped by our house as they often do. My mom was sitting in the living room, and Verity quickly ran to her and said, “Grandmom! One of your husbands is here!”

Our happy girl faces each day with a smile, and she keeps us smiling, too. She is helpful and kind, and loved by us all. Happy (very belated!) Birthday, Verity Laine!

Seventeen. Friends, this beautiful young lady, the one who made me a mom, is almost an adult! If you had asked me just a few years ago if I was ready to be a mom to an almost-adult, who would be doing things like driving and having a job and taking SATs and thinking about college, I would have said absolutely no way. This is my baby we’re talking about!

But this girl: she’s more adult than I am some days. She is fast becoming one of the people I go to if I’m stuck on something. And if she doesn’t know how to do it either, she will pursue it until she figures it out. Whether I can’t figure out something on my computer or phone or I don’t know what book we should be reading next for school (more on that later), Pippa is my person.

Pippa’s diverse interests include: LM Montgomery books, running, heavy cream, bento lunch boxes, the Trim Healthy Mama eating plan, knitting and crocheting, and anything purple (Violet is her middle name, after all). Calling these things “interests” doesn’t really do it justice though. When Pippa takes up a new interest, she does it with gusto, researching it and steeping herself in it until it becomes a part of who she is at the very core of her being. When I say she likes LM Montgomery, I mean that she reads blogs about her writing and books about her life and has favorite cover illustrators. When I say she runs, I mean she sets goals for herself and has a chart hanging on her bedroom wall with an intricate set of rewards for reaching different milestones. When I say she loves heavy cream… Well, that speaks for itself really, doesn’t it? She doesn’t do anything half-heartedly.

She is also our resident expert on homeschool curriculum, and “Box Day” is one of the high holidays of her annual calendar. Each summer when we order our curriculum for the coming year, it is Pippa who creates a chart of what everyone needs so that we make sure to get everything ordered. I just do as I’m told now. One year, just for fun, she mapped out exactly which set of curriculum we would need for every year until Verity and Freya are in high school. For. Fun! (She might try to tell you it wasn’t really for fun, but that it somehow affected decisions that we needed to make right then and there. They were 3 and 1 at the time, so I’ll let you be the judge of that!)

Pippa started working at Wendy’s about three months ago (in addition to babysitting for her little cousin Brooke one day a week). I think we were all holding our breath a little. (It’s a funny thing with homeschooling: you spend so many years sheltering your child from the world, but at some point, you just have to sort of toss them out there!) There was definitely a little bit of culture shock that first week, but she very quickly became known for being dependable and kind. She has met so many people from walks of life very different to hers, and when I hear her talk about her shift as we drive home from work, I can tell she just genuinely likes them all. (And I can tell they like her, too!)

Pippa wants to be an elementary school teacher, and she will absolutely rock it. To look at her Pinterest account, you would think she already is one! She’s constantly finding new creative activities for her littlest siblings (and cousin) to try out. She has fully embraced her role of big sister extraordinaire. She loves her little siblings well, and they are so blessed to have her. We all are.

Philippa Violet, happy last birthday before becoming an adult! I would love to hold onto you forever, but you are so ready to fly. Keep living your life with the same joy, enthusiasm, and love for God and others that you have shown so far. I love you, Pip!

Happy 15th birthday to Thaddeus Merit!

Oh, this boy! He is equal parts sweet, cuddly teddy bear and fierce, ninja-dragon-robot! He loves to put on a tough guy act, but he is also the first to hop up and refill someone’s drink or soup bowl, and he gets Daddy’s cereal for him almost every morning. He is thoughtful and sweet, but with a definite dash of naughty!

Teddy joined our family four years ago at 10 years old. He was our 4th and final adoption, and came to us in the thick of a crazy season, during which it may not have seemed wise to add just one more. I remember sharing the secret fear of my heart with a dear adoptive Mama friend just before Teddy came home: “What if he’s hard?” And she replied, “He could be hard!”

Well it turns out, by the grace of God, he’s not! He still struggles with some of the effects of years of fending for himself (in particular, he still has a hard time not helping himself to other people’s possessions, sometimes even hiding them in his bed or backpack). But he is always so genuinely sorry and so endearing to all of us that no one seems to be able to stay mad at him for long. We say, “Teddy, have you seen Annis’s Legos?” and he immediately hops up and brings it to us, yelling “Sowwa (Sorry)!” all the way.

Teddy is an expert at occupying his time. He spends parts of every day building elaborate Lego structures (usually creatures), drawing increasingly detailed and diverse pictures, building with cardboard and tape and scissors, and rocking out to music on YouTube. He is always busy and never bored.

Today is very possibly the most anticipated birthday in the history of our family. Ever since Niko and Lewis had their birthdays back-to-back in March, Teddy has reminded me daily that he wanted “oh-shay fru-frot” (crochet robot) for his birthday. There have been many, many trips to the wall calendar to show him the weeks and months that he still had to wait. He even tried crossing out a sibling’s birthday and writing his own name in a month or two ago, to no avail (Again: so naughty, yet so endearing.) Today was finally the day, and it was filled to the brim with robots of all shapes and sizes, including a crocheted one. I think it was a good day. Let’s hope it lasts him till next year!

Teddy’s speech is improving all the time thanks to his hard work and that of his friends at Theraplay. He now often strings two or three clear words together to express himself, and his confidence is growing accordingly. His receptive language is through the roof, and he can pick out words he recognizes from three rooms away. (Indeed, many a night after we think he is asleep, he hears his name in conversation all the way from his room and yells, “me?!”)

Speaking of Theraplay, just about every time we go, Teddy makes a card for his lady love, Miss Alison. She isn’t usually the therapist who works with him anymore, but she holds a special place in his heart, and whenever he catches a glimpse of her he calls, “Alison! Miss you! Heart!” She is one of a very select group he refers to as his “new friends”. He has one at Awana and another at church, and he is fiercely loyal to them. It’s tough to convince him that some of them are already married 😉

Teddy keeps life interesting and adds so much fun to our home. I am so thankful we said yes!