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!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Jessica!

Today is Jessica's second birthday! She has had such a lovely day today and has thoroughly enjoyed herself opening lots of lovely cards and presents, playing with her new toys, seeing her birthday card on CBeebies, eating cake and having lots of people around to wish her a happy birthday and spend time with her. We have had visits from Grandma and Grandad and Great-Auntie Marlene. In the afternoon, Jessica had a little birthday party with her friend Daniel from her baby signing group and godmummy Katy has come to stay this evening and help prepare for Jessica's birthday party tomorrow.  Here are a few photos of Jessica enjoying her birthday:

Today is also the second anniversary of Jessica's first open-heart surgery when she was just eight hours old - one of several 'heart days' in the calendar.  Jessica has been through so much in her first two years (although thankfully the past year has been much less eventful than the first year was!) but we are so blessed that she has come so far and done so very well. She brings so much joy to our lives and we thank God every day for her. Happy 2nd birthday beautiful Jessica Charlotte - Mummy and Daddy love you very, very much.

Appointments, postboxes, photos and birthday preparations

We have had a couple of appointments this week - Jessica had a trip to the dentist on Monday and was very good at sitting in the chair and letting the dentist look at her teeth. The fourth canine is through so she has sixteen teeth in total, all of which look healthy which is good. This morning's appointment was with the paediatrician who was very happy with how Jessica is getting on. She now weighs 10.86kg (23lb 14oz) and is continuing to follow the 25th centile line nicely. Height-wise she seems to be taking after Mummy - she is now 80.6cm tall and is just under the 9th centile for height. Sats were also good today at 85% and we don't need to see the paediatrician again now until April although will continue to have monthly visits from the community nurse and a heart check-up at the end of November.

Jessica's speaking vocabulary is really starting to increase now - we are getting a new word almost every day now - over the last few days we have added 'shoes', 'cheese' and 'food' to the list. She is also starting to copy things that we do - one of our discipline techniques is the three chances technique - it is quite funny to hear Jessica saying 'no' and holding up her finger and saying 'one' although we have to try not to let her see us laughing!

 Daddy got to see Jessica briefly on his birthday as he only got back from Cologne that evening, The next day, we were off to Sunderland for the bank holiday weekend as Daddy was working on the family fun day at the Nissan factory - Jessica quite enjoyed helping him test the racing game. We ticked off a few more gold postboxes on our way back home and have now visited all of the Olympic ones other than the Isle of Man and Sark and are halfway through the Paralympic ones.

Jessica did her first walk into the village and back last week - it is only a few minutes away but seemed a fair distance for her little legs. She absolutely loved being able to walk there with Mummy though (who found that Jessica's walking pace is not too different from hers these days!) and has enjoyed a couple more opportunities to have a longer walk when out and about.

We have now got the photos through from the Charlie Jones' Foundation Book of Love photo shoot and are absolutely delighted with them, thank you so much to Broomhill Photography for such fabulous photos. We have shared a few of our favourites below.

This week is looking to be quite a busy one as we are preparing for Jessica's second birthday on Friday. We can't quite believe that our baby girl is about to turn two already - how time has flown but what a wonderful blessing it has been to watch her grow from a tiny baby to the beautiful happy toddler she is today.