Sunday, December 28, 2008

Pictures from the broken camera...



My poor little broken camera had such a hard time giving me the pictures it had on it. :) It took a couple of tries, but we got them!!

The first one is our Christmas picture this year in front of our Christmas tree. It is the only picture out of the many we took where all of us are looking at the camera and smiling without our eyes closed or making a funny face.




Landon and I took a pretty good picture together...don't we look so cute! :)





Then Landon and his daddy...they are like two peas in a pod.





Apparently Landon thought something was funny. I thought this one was super cute after I looked at it. He's sitting in the rocking chair that I had as a little girl. I guess we're going to pass it down. :)

Below are a couple of pictures that we took of Landon in his Christmas pjs. The one on the right is Landon's first gift of the day, a guitar that my mom gave him. It's actually really cool cause it plays real songs instead of things like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".

Landon did really well this Christmas. Santa brought him a climber that looks like a tree house and has stairs with a slide. He hasn't gotten the hang of the stairs yet, but he LOVES the slide. He's already learned how to go down by himself. He got a Little People airplane and airport that he's been learning how to play with. He also got lots of clothes, which are greatly appreciated. Can't have enough, you know? All in all, Christmas was fun this year. I can't wait to see what he's going to do next year! He'll definately get more into it and we might actually get to go see Santa. :)





We love you all and hope you have a Happy New Year!!!

XOXOXO

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Christmas time...

Hello everyone!!

I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas! I know we did!! Landon had a blast opening his presents. He learned that the paper does rip off, but he was confused as to why we weren't getting mad at him. After he would rip some of the paper off he would try and put it back on. :) It was super cute.

I do have some unfortunate news though...my camera died...for good. I thought that maybe it was the batteries that I was using, and Braydon bought me some brand new ones to use in it on Christmas morning. Unfortunately, it wasn't the batteries after all. I got a couple of pictures on it, but then it died, so I have to figure out a way to get the pictures off of the camera. After that, I will post them.

Braydon and I actually went camera shopping today, and bought a new one. It will be here in the next couple of days so I will take some pictures of him and post those too. :) I can't wait! :)

So....that's all I've got right now. I'll get those pictures posted as soon as I can. Thank you for a wonderful Christmas!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Santa Claus is coming to town...

Hello all!

I hope everyone is ready for Christmas....I know I am! :) We have all of these wonderful presents under our tree that people have been sending us (thank you by the way) and I can't wait to see what Landon does with them on Christmas! We've already had him trying to open the boxes that everything was sent in. It will be a fun day!

Landon has been fighting off his first cold of the season, and somehow passed it on to Braydon, myself, and one of his nurses. I guess that's our fault...maybe we shouldn't be lovin' on him so much. :) He's getting better though, just some coughing from his runny nose.

If you don't know already, Landon has been learning some sign language to help him communicate with us. He's been doing really well with it and has already learned quite a few signs. We started out showing him "eat", "more", "all done", and "help" which he picked up pretty quickly. We've more recently taught him the sign for "bird" and is gladly showing us that sign for everything in the house that has a beak. :) We were going over some animal sounds with him using some flash cards. We came across the elephant and I showed him how to raise his hand up in the air like an elephant's trunk, and now he will do the motion upon request. I was amazed how fast he picked that one up. I'm going to need to study more signs to teach him cause I'm running out of material for him. :)

Well, I just wanted to send a little note out there. We hope everyone enjoys the holidays, and even though we aren't there in person, we are there in spirit. Love you all!!!

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Having fun with the Christmas Tree


Hello everyone!! We just wanted to share the adventures that we had with Landon when we put up the Christmas tree. We have a remote that turns on our lights to the tree and we let Landon play with it. He had a good ol' time turning them off and on. Enjoy!!

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Landon's PT visit...

Landon visited Penny, his physical therapist, today. We worked on trying to get him to walk up stairs. He fought with us a little on it, but eventually gave in and started doing it with only a little bit of whining. :) Penny says that Landon is in the 50th percentile for his age in his gross motor skills. Which means he is right on track!!! I was so excited to hear that! Penny and I were reminiscing about six months ago when Braydon and I first brought him in and how he could barely sit up, he wouldn't lay on his tummy without a fight, and he wasn't crawling!! And now look at him! It's amazing how much he has changed in such a small amount of time. Penny tried to discharge us from coming to see her, but I wanted to make sure that he keeps on track, and since insurance covered us for 50 visits why not take advantage of that, right? So we are going to go back in February for a follow-up visit. We are working on kicking a ball, walking up stairs and pushing himself along on a riding toy. Penny will evaluate him again when he sees her in February and then we probably won't be going again. It's bittersweet to think that we won't see her anymore. She has helped Landon in so many ways, but at the same time, it's a sign that Landon is healthy and is moving along on the right track.

I've put up a couple of more recent pictures. The top picture is from Thanksgiving. We gave him a leg from the turkey to see what he would do with it. He mostly pointed at it and wasn't really sure what to do. But it made for some cute pictures. This was the first year that he was able to eat some table food. He enjoyed eating the turkey that PaPa made and jello that our friend Pyper brought over. The next day he became more fond of Nona's mashed potatoes. Just more proof that he is my child! :)

The bottom picture is one of the random ones that I took when he was playing. His nurse, Heidi, and I thought he looked so grown up in this one. It was also a day where he kept his glasses on. Those are few and far between! :)

Well, that's it for now. We have some other stuff going on before the holidays, so I'll keep everyone updated. Keep us in your thoughts!


Wednesday, December 3, 2008


I know this is a little late, but here is a picture from Halloween this year. I think that this will be Landon's favorite holiday when he gets older. He doesn't mind being scared...he actually thinks it's funny. :)
Landon dressed up as Frankenstein this year, and I took him around the neighborhood to get the experience. I really don't think he understood what we were doing, but he didn't make a peep. I think he will enjoy it a little more next year. Braydon already has plans to make him into a robot or something crazy like that. Gotta love my husband. :)
We hope that everyone's turkey day was delicious and you got to spend it with the people you love. My mom and step-dad came to visit us this year, and it was so nice to have them here. Landon took a little while to get used to them, but he eventually warmed up to them.
Landon has been doing really well. We've been going to see a doctor in Denver (who was recommended to us by Landon's ENT doctor) named Dr. Wayne Yakes who specializes in lymphangioma and hemangioma. He calls them "vascular malformations" which is a medical way of saying bad veins. He says that Landon's condition was caused in utero when Landon was developing. It's basically where the first veins that we have as an embryo aren't absorbed into the body when it transforms into circulatory system. When these primitive veins aren't absorbed into the body, they turn into the redness that you see on his lip and the little bruise shape on his lower right cheek. Some can be buried further in the skin like the ones in his left cheek. They can form on different parts of the body, the legs, arms, torso, but Landon's just happened to form around his neck and cheek. Lucky us, I know. :)
Anyways, so Dr. Yakes has been seeing Landon the past few months and is doing a procedure on him where he basically injects these bad veins with alcohol, which is shrinking the veins and making them permanently disappear. The past two procedures we've done have been focused on his tongue. Since it's so large, his ear, nose and throat doctor wanted to focus on that first, so that Landon will be able to eat and speak more efficiently. Since then, we have found that it has made a dramatic improvement in the size of his tongue. He's able to stick his tongue out more than he used to and is able to move food around in his mouth. It's been a remarkable change. We can do this procedure every 4 to 6 weeks, and hope to get out there again before the winter weather really sets in. We'll see...
Landon has also recently started seeing a occupational therapist at Children's Hospital here in Omaha to work on trying to have him learn how to suck and swallow. He never really had the chance to learn that as a baby, so we're playing a game of catch up in that department. We've been introducing different cups, some with straws and some without. The OT wants to move him up to cups as soon as we can because she thinks it will be easier for him to be more efficient. My end goal for Landon is obviously to get him to where he gets all of his nutrition through eating and drinking orally. After he is doing that we can talk about getting his G-button taken out. That probably won't be for a little while though, but I would rather start with that process now rather than later.
That sums up what is going on in our world. Feel free to ask questions if need be. I know I can sound a little confusing. My thought processes aren't what they used to be......:)