Jubilee Violet~ Week 1

Jube's, Jule's, Juby, she has already acquired a few nicknames from us. Whatever we decide to refer to her as, Jubilee is 1 week old already. It goes so fast and I do not know if I like it! I love these sweet first few weeks when they are little,well for the most part. There are new fears and worries I always go through when they are this little so the battle to remind myself of the truth is engaged in a whole other realm. Thankfully I have been down this road before so there is some of the battle that seems familiar now and that takes away some of the scariness of it.

About sweet Jubilee. Delivery went very well and it seems surreal that it is all over. You anticipate that day for so long and then all of a sudden it is all said and done. But it is all is so good! The kids have all responded very well to her, even Simeon. I do not trust him with her yet of course, but he sure does like to love on her. The biggest challenge right now is that he is sick (as well as some of the other kids and Eric) so trying to keep germ infested fingers, slobber and lips away from her face is a challenge. Hopefully everything will clear up soon and they can show as much affection to her as is safe! I am so excited to see pink in the house again, it has been a long time and the blue was of course a welcome guest when it came as well. I guess all of our instincts were right as far as us thinking that it was a girl, maybe it was some wishful thinking on some of our parts. Not that that is what determines gender but you know what I mean:) She has a lot of dark brown hair and has an identical blond patch on the side of her head to what Taylor had when she was a baby. She is the first of our kiddos to remind me of Jordan and Taylor when they were newborns. She definitely has some Gracie in her as well and Gracie is tickled pink (get it) that she now gets to boot Simeon out of her room and welcome a new room mate. Mostly because now we get to decorate her room according to her femininity and not be gender neutral so as not to upset any of our boys' man hood! Simeon will now anticipate a move in to his older brother's room in the near future.

Back to Jubilee, she is as sweet as can be. She is very calm and not demanding as of yet. I am sure that will come but it does make for a fun time to just cuddle her and enjoy having her around. She love's to be held and there is never a shortage of willing arms to do that for her. If anything, the problem is trying to figure out who's turn it is to hold her and how long "so and so" has been holding her. Usually whoever is holding her at the moment is the one of being accused of "holding her for all day".

Jubilee, her name, has been the topic of conversation among others and it has been fun to explain where it came from. Jubilee is a biblical name from the Old Testament which means a time of celebration. I won't go into the whole theological explanation of it but it is a time from which slavery, indebtedness, and working of the land was to cease for a period of time giving the person and/ or land a time of rest. In the midst of a sin infested, suffering world our God gave his people a time to rest and celebrate him and who he is. We know that Jesus is our ultimate Jubilee as he is a fulfillment of all of that, but our baby's name is a sweet reminder of why and who we can celebrate. Even in the midst of pain, suffering, and conflicts that will ultimately only cease on the day our Savior brings those that are his back with him to glory. Violet, her middle name, was my Grandma's name and Eric's grandma's middle name. So, we had settled on that pretty early on in the pregnancy. It was the one name we had agreed upon before she was born! Boy am I glad she was a girl, you should have heard some of the boy names that Eric had thrown out there!

Now I will over load you with pictures, because she is so darn cute. We think.

 Jube's first bath. I always request with my c-section babies that I get to give them their first bath. It is symbolic for mi I guess and the nurse's are always kind enough to deal with my messy babies until I am well enough to do it.