Happy Birthday to Landon!!!!

I can't believe that my little boy is already 2 years old!!! Where does time go? I think every 4th of July Braydon and I think about how 2 years ago we were sitting watching fireworks saying that we were going to have a baby the next day...it is definately a day of reflection to see how far we have come in a year. Last year Landon was one and could only crawl...and it's funny now to look back and see how big he is today. Yea, he can't walk anymore or crawl, but he could at one point and that's all that matters. It gives him more drive to get there again one day. :) We spent the night watching the fireworks from the hill we go on every year where we can see fireworks for miles. Landon loved them and wasn't scared by them at all...I kept telling him that they were all for his birthday. :)


As for his birthday, we didn't do much because of everything going on so we thought we would just spend the day relaxing with Landon at home. We sang happy birthday to him every chance we got and blew out the candles on his cake as a family. :) We opened some presents (although he probably would've just been happy with the gigantic bag that they came in). We got him his first Care Bear...that's what the yellow thing is in the picture below. :)





We received some cards in the mail, so we decided to take a picture with them to thank the people that sent them. :)


Landon has been doing really well over the past few days. He's become more interactive and expressive. He's been having fun giving us "five" and gets really excited over it. Last night we went on a walk and decided to let Landon decide where he wanted to go. He would hold his hand out like he was trying to point, but it was more like reaching. Braydon is going to try and get the video we took of him and put it up so everyone can see. I'll keep bugging him for it. ;) He's also been doing better with cruising along the table and coordinating his feet with his hands. His right hand is still not up to speed with his left, but the OT, Chelli, keeps telling us to work with it and it will eventually start to catch up. Walking is still hard cause he isn't holding his body weight very much, so we're having to hold him up and it's not very comfortable on our backs...but, it's all he seems happy doing. You can tell that he is the same kid inside, he's just frustrated cause he can't do the same things as he did before. I wish I could snap my fingers and change that for him, and I sometimes have dreams that that would happen but good things don't come without a little hard work, right??

Today we visited Chelli to do another swallow study to make sure Landon hadn't lost the ability to swallow food or drinks. Everything went really well and Landon didn't choke on any of the things we gave him. Chelli said that it took him a little while to move things to the back of his tongue, but when he got it back there, he swallowed it nicely. With that said, she gave us the go ahead to start giving him pureed foods again!! She said with a little practice with swallowing and with some exercises with spoons to move his tongue around, he will get better with it and we will be able to move up from there. Needless to say, after we left the hospital I went to the grocery store and got some things to try out...I think I was more excited than he was! :)

Tomorrow we visit Penny for PT, so I'll let you know if anything exciting happens. :)