To thicken, or not to thicken...that is the question...

Hi everyone! We hope you all had a happy new year!! We're excited about what will happen in the next year with Landon.

I wanted to let everyone know that we received our brand new camera today!!! YEA!!! I'm so excited to have a new one, but it's so fancy, I have to read the novel that came with it. :) I will post some new pictures soon.

We also had a field trip to Children's today for an appointment with Chelli (Landon's occupational therapist). We did a swallowing study to test Landon on how well he is swallowing foods and liquids. He sits in a chair in this x-ray machine and they video tape him swallowing. Whatever they give him has barium in it to make it glow. It shows (in profile) him chewing and the way he moves his tongue around, then when he is done eating it, you can watch him swallow it. It's really pretty cool.

Landon has been drinking juice from a cup, but ever since we got clearance to give him liquids when he was a baby, we've had to thicken it up so that he won't aspirate (breathe it in). Chelli wanted to see if there had been any changes in the past year in how he's eating and drinking since the last swallow study. We started out giving him liquids that weren't thickened and he did really well with them!! We also tried giving him some pudding which he also did really well with! We went back to giving him the unthickened liquids, and on the second gulp Chelli said he aspirated a little bit, but not even enough to make him cough! So, just to be safe, we have to stick with the thickened stuff for another year.

I was hoping for some progression with all of this, but i guess it's better to stay on the same track than to be getting worse. I'm definately counting my blessings!! Landon's been growing up so much recently. He's learning about laughing and has been imitating me when I laugh at things. It's really cute. He's learned how to throw everything in the house, so we are learning about what is acceptable to throw and what is not. (That's great fun, let me tell you) :) I might kick myself for this one, but we are learning how to color with crayons. He's been doing really well with it, making lines and dots. He understands when I tell him to only color on the paper, but then he wants to carry the crayons around the house. ARGG!! I think my walls will soon become canvases for Landon's drawings. :)

We have our 18 month appointment with the pediatrician next week, so we'll see what she has to say.