Christina's Heart & Ears

Recently Christina has developed a couple new problems. One of her issues is potentially serious and the other is a quality of life concern. The serious concern is that she has developed atrial fibrillation and tachycardia. Basically this is a rapid and irregular heart beat. She was born with heart defects (several holes), but she was asymptomatic until recently. The atrial fibrillation comes and goes. At times she will go days and weeks without an issue. And then like last week, for instance, she was going in and out of fibrillation for a couple days. When it happens she is completely miserable and even holding her doesn't seem to comfort her. Our concern is that this puts her at higher risk for heart attack or stroke. We are obviously concerned about this but only to an extent. It's just one of many issues she has.

Her other new problem is that she is developing hearing loss. Her hearing was tested at birth and it was fine. She now has high frequency hearing loss, which is speech and hearing consonant sounds. She will most likely be non-verbal due to her low IQ and now not being able to hear speech. She can still hear things, and luckily she was born to a very loud mother so she can hear me, her favorite person! She can also hear music and she seems to really respond to and delight in music. In church I am the pianist for the children's primary. And many Sundays I will take Christina with me and she will sit right up to the piano and just be in heaven! It makes me grateful my parents made me learn to play the piano!

And here are other just cute recent pictures of Miss Chris. She is so hard to photograph since she hides her cute face most of the time. So on the rare occasion she lets us see her face I try to snap a few!

Renovations to New Home - Lighting

We have finally figured out most of our lighting in the new house. It only took five months. At this rate James will have moved out and had a few kids by the time we've finished renovating!

We finally agreed on simple, modern pendant lights. Each of us liked more unique and more interesting pendant lights, but we didn't agree on any of them. But we both were okay with this option.

Brian let me choose the dining room chandeliers and please ignore the table, it is NOT staying. It is a spot filler. We had Brian's Christmas party at our house and we just needed a table for the occasion, so we turned to Craigslist. But it is far too traditional for our tastes. Decor posts will be after our renovations, so in like a decade or two!

In all the bedrooms and the office there were no lights in the ceiling, only a hot switch for a lamp. That's weird, right? So we had pocket lights installed and Brian installed fans in all the bedrooms.(Except the baby girls' room which has a pretty chandelier.) The girls' room is my favorite, sweet and girly!

All this lighting we had done seems a little ironic since we keep all our blinds shut and the lights are almost always off to keep the house dark for little Christina. But it stilled seemed normal to put lights in!

We did agree that we will agree and decide on floors this year. So I hope my next post will be on flooring. But I'm not holding my breath.