Landon's a rock star!!

This picture is pretty fitting for my little man!  He's a pretty amazing kid!  I have to say that Landon is probably one of my heros.  He's such a fighter and surprises everyone with what he can accomplish.  Going from May 2009 to now and how much he's grown and progressed, I can't imagine him being any short of amazing!  If any of you need a refresher as to how far he's come, just check this out!  You can also watch the video at the bottom of the screen.  Watching that video makes me feel so blessed.  I'm so glad that we took the time to document everything that happened.  Just to remember where we've been and how far Landon has come.

Speaking of Landon being amazing (no pun intended), we've been still going to speech therapy over the summer with Kim.  She's awesome with him, and is always amazed by what he accomplishes.  Sometimes even in a week's time.  He's talking so well and even clear enough for anyone to understand him.  There are still some things even I have a hard time understanding, but I didn't think he would make such progress in such a short amount of time!  Neither did Kim!

I was watching some videos on my phone the other night that were taken right after Sydney was born.  On the video, Landon is spelling out JCPenney's.  He couldn't say the letters very clearly, and was making the sounds for most of them.  The C was just a little click of the tongue, where now he can pronounce every letter and most of their sounds.  There are still a couple of sounds that he gets caught up on (like X and Q, J and F), but for the most part, he has trumped a year and a half ago.  Here is a video of him spelling his name, and you can tell that he couldn't pronounce "N".

The trach disappearing definitely helped a lot of his progression, and we're hoping that he just continues to progress to where eventually we won't have to go to therapy!  Kim is already talking about how he's almost to where other kids his age are struggling.  I couldn't believe it!  He's come so far!!!

I'm hoping that this year in school, Landon will graduate from using his iPad and he will speak clear enough for his teachers and his peers to understand him.  Only time will tell... :)  At the end of the school year, his speech teacher at school (Mrs. Wilson) was only working on using his iPad when she couldn't understand him.  We wanted to make sure that speaking was his first choice, even at school.  She would work on him using his iPad when she would say "what?" to him, like she didn't understand him (even if she did).  He's so efficient with it, that he had no problem with communicating with it.  I'm so happy that he has such great teachers that are so willing to help him out!  We ran into Mrs. Wilson at Walmart last week and even in the month and a half that she hasn't seen him, she was saying how clear he sounds!  It always makes me happy to hear things like that.  Not because I don't realize how far he's come, but because sometimes I forget how fast he progresses.  He's one amazing kid....A ROCK STAR!! :)