Jessica’s first term at preschool has been a happy one – she
has settled in so wonderfully and made some friends. It was a joy to be able to see her taking
part in her first preschool concert just before Easter and whilst she was too
little overwhelmed by the sea of faces to join in with the singing, she was
quite happy to sit on her key worker’s lap and join in with the actions to the
songs. Her preschool have been brilliant
with regards to trying to be as well-informed as possible with regards to
Jessica’s heart condition and how best to support her learning experience and
are already being proactive with regards to thinking about a health care plan
before Jessica starts primary school next year.
We were also very proud of both girls for receiving signing
certificates at their Tiny Talk class before Easter – Jessica can now do over
75 signs and Sophie received her 25 signs certificate. These days Jessica’s constant chatter means
that there is less need to be able to communicate through signing but she and
Sophie both love going to toddler signing each week.
We enjoyed catching up with some other heart families at the
Little Hearts Matter open day at the end of last month and attended some
interesting talks about exercise, preparing for primary school and life
post-Fontan which have given us some food for thought. We also enjoyed celebrating with our friends
Alex and Sarah at their twins’ naming day and Jessica and Sophie enjoyed being
able to run about outside in the sunshine!
We have enjoyed some time away as a family over the last
couple of weeks, travelling around the country on our quest to find the rest of
the gold postboxes! We have now visited all 46 of the Paralympic ones as well
as finding one extra Olympic one that wasn’t on our original list and have only
the Olympic gold postbox on the Isle of Man left to visit before we have done
them all! It is lovely to look back over the photos from the last three years
of our gold postbox challenge and see how Jessica has grown up over this time
(and see Sophie starting to be part of the challenge too!)
Jessica enjoyed staying at “the moon” each night (otherwise known
as Premier Inn but it sounds so much more fun to go to the moon each night) and
as she slept in a single bed throughout the whole trip, we realised it was high
time we took the sides off her cot and converted it into a bed (something we
hadn’t got around to as she has always seemed happy in her cot and never made
any attempt to climb out). So far she
seems quite happy in it and loves her new Peppa Pig duvet set!
Whilst on our holidays, we also enjoyed celebrating with our
friends Rachel and James at their wedding – both Jessica and Sophie enjoyed the
ceilidh in the evening and Jessica did a pretty good attempt at the Gay
Gordons! We also got to catch up with godmummy Gillian and attend the Palm
Sunday service at her church – it was lovely to meet some of the people there
who have been praying for Jessica. We
had a lovely afternoon at soft play whilst visiting Gillian although Jessica
did give us a bit of a fright by managing to slip out of the toddler area
without us noticing and the couple of minutes between realising she wasn’t in
the toddler area and discovering her in the bigger kids area felt rather long!
We visited lots of places on our trip around the country –
Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness, the RRS Discovery in Dundee (which
is the ship that took Scott on his first trip to the Antarctic), the
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, the National Showcaves in Wales (where Jessica enjoyed
seeing all the dinosaurs in the dinosaur park and painting her own dinosaur
picture) and also got to catch up with our friends Fred, Steph and Cecilia and
Neil and Sandra on the way home.
Since being home, Jessica has been enjoying spending time
with some of her cousins on Michael’s side of the family as cousins Elisabetta,
Seren and Siân have all come over for a visit and this weekend will see her
enjoying time with her other cousins on my side of the family as Auntie Fizz,
Ebony and Erin are coming to stay.
Heart-wise, things seem to be stable at present – Jessica’s
sats were slightly lower at her last community nurse check-up at around 78-80
but she seems well in herself and not noticeably bluer than usual.
