Our beautiful daughter Jessica was born in September 2011 with a severe heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. This was diagnosed at her 20 week scan and we were initially told that she was unlikely to be suitable for surgery. However, a pioneering in-utero operation at 28 weeks to enlarge a hole in her atrial septum was carried out and she was able to make it to term and get through her first open-heart surgery at just eight hours old. Jessica underwent five more surgeries during her life. Her final surgery - the Fontan procedure - took place in December 2017. She initially made a good recovery but sadly passed away suddenly on 14th April 2018 at the age of 6. This is the story of a little girl whose half a heart overflowed with love. She was, and will forever be, our little miracle and brought joy to all who knew her.

Friday, 20 September 2013

Two years and two weeks

 
Can’t believe that two weeks have passed since Jessica’s birthday – time goes so fast! We had a bigger birthday party for her at Grandma and Grandad’s house the day after her birthday with family and Jessica had a lovely time with her aunties, uncles, godparents, cousins and grandparents and particularly enjoyed the bouncy castle. She also had a lovely time the day after her party at another party – this time for our friend’s baby’s naming day. Three parties in three days!




We are enjoying being back at our various groups now that the summer break is over and Jessica is really enjoying the toddler signing class. In the last two weeks, her speaking vocabulary has been increasingly rapidly – we had four new words today: ‘towel’, ‘four’, ‘five’ and ‘six’ and Jessica has also started learning how to count (or at least when asked ‘what comes after one?’ she says ‘two’ and ‘what comes after two’, ‘three’ – clever girl!).



Other new skills have involved technology – after making the mistake of leaving the Sonos controller unlocked and in Jessica’s cot at bedtime the other day, we suddenly got deafened by very loud music downstairs and headed upstairs to find a very awake, very happy little girl enjoying playing with her shiny ‘toy’. She also managed to send two tweets on Daddy’s twitter account using the same controller (Mummy didn’t even know that was possible so Jessica already knows more about some of our household gadgets than Mummy does!) so has made her first steps on the social networking front!


Jessica has definitely started exploring the boundaries a little more since turning two – the word ‘no’ seems a little less effective than it was and we are having to toddler-proof various shelves and drawers at a rapid rate as she quite enjoys climbing on the sofa and pulling DVDs off the shelf (and can now reach the next shelf up too!) – all done with her usual big cheeky grin!


Jessica still seems quite unaware that she will be getting a little sibling before very long although loves playing with her dollies in their pram and is very definite about one thing – babies cry a lot. Every time she goes to check on her dollies, she starts making baby crying noises – well at least she will be prepared for that part of a new baby in the house!



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