We’ve had a new front door!

I know you will read the first sentence of this post and think, ‘she’s lost the plot’, how can she write a post about a new front door! But bear with me dear reader as I explain the significances of our new front door.

We’ve lived in our house for almost ten years, we moved in three days before we got married! That was a crazy and exciting week! In all those years I’ve never really given the front door much thought, it was a pretty average door, it had a letter box, a little spy hole and the top half was made from glass. And this is where my story starts, the window in the door.

Soon after diagnosis we put UV blocking film on all our windows to stop harmful rays coming into Livvy’s safe space, her home. However as our home is south facing, the front of our house is constantly in the direct path of those harmful UV rays. We found that on very high UV days we were still getting a reading directly in front of the windows, it wasn’t too much of a problem as there is no real reason why Livvy would need to be in front of the windows. Apart from when she wants to go upstairs, our stairs stop right in front of the front door. If you want to go upstairs you have to pass the front door, I found that on high UV days I was keeping the blind closed on the door to ensure my baby girl could remain safe if she wanted to go upstairs.

We’d talked about replacing the door for one without a window, but I wasn’t sure if it would make the hallway too dark during the day. So we left the idea on a pile with all our other home improvements tasks, that we may one day sort though and start doing!

However, it brought it home to me how much we needed one a few weeks ago when we arrived home from school and the sun was shining, the UV wasn’t high as it was the last few days of winter, it was one of those late winter days were the sun sits low in the sky but is so bright it blinds and dazzles you. Livvy closed the door behind us and started to close the blind, I asked her what she was doing, she told me it’s too bright. Yes it was bright but it wasn’t dangerous, the UV wasn’t strong enough to get through the film. She’d remembered back to those ridiculously high UV days of the summer where she’d seen me closing the blinds to stop the UV. She wants her own independence and to take charge of XP, she won’t let it stop her or beat her in any way but at the same time she’s still so young, it’s hard for us to know what she truly understands about her condition. It’s our job as parents to help her to understand but also to feel safe. The window in our front door wasn’t making her feel safe. I put my foot down and that was it we were having a new front door – minus a window.

I was upstairs the day the new door was being fitted, putting clothes away and ironing school uniforms, the man that was fitting it called up to me as he was almost finished, I headed down stairs to a newly darkened hallway, I was taken a back by my own reaction to the lack of light. My heart skipped a beat, and I couldn’t hide the smile on my face. The lack of light for some will cast a shadow on their day, but not for us. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was every time I went upstairs all I saw was a big blank door, so I got my needle and thread out and got to work ensuring our shadows stay as bright as we can make them.

A happy hello has replaced the window in the door.