Walkin' and Talkin'

Well, things have been changing around the Walsh household. Landon has been showing improvements over the past few weeks with walking, talking, and his fine motor skills. We have days where he will wake up and be doing something new...and he hasn't necessarily been doing as much of that as when he first started to get better.

We have been pushing him to walk again at physical therapy and to learn how to cruise along the table or couch. He started out pretty wobbly with cruising (almost like he was trying to dance and walk at the same time), but has progressively gotten better. We have been making him stand independently and he can stand in one place for almost 30 seconds at a time! Penny was very impressed with how much he was wanting to walk and so she had him start taking steps last Thursday at PT. The most steps he took unassisted was 5 but we are hoping with lots of unassisted practice he will get better and better. He still needs someone with him to catch him when he falls (which is a lot). Even when he is just standing shifting his weight from foot to foot he will cross his legs and fall over. We think that he might forget about what he is doing, so we have to constantly remind him of where he is in space. He also does this with his right hand. We'll give him something to hold and he'll look at it for a second or two and then put his hand down and forget he's got something. We constantly prompt him to look at what's in his hand and sometimes he will and sometimes he'll look at us like we are crazy. I think that will all come back with more practice.

We started really working with our speech therapist, Ashley, last week. She asked me to bring Landon's pasy muir so that she can hear him talk. A pasy muir is a piece that connects to the end of Landon's trach to help us hear his voice. It is a one-way valve that will allow air into his trach but won't allow it to come out of his trach. That way the air is forced passed his trach and up through his vocal cords. It's fun to listen to him cause he likes having it on and to have his voice heard. He can get quite loud! :) Anyways, so we worked with Ashley on making different noises and also on doing signs. He has been doing more sign language including the sign for "bird", "thank you", "please", "help", "all done", and we are working on getting him to do "more" again. That one is a little harder for him cause you have to use both hands, and he forgets he has a right hand...so you can see our dilema. :) Ashley was very impressed with how well he tolorated his pasy muir and told me to bring it with us every Wednesday when we work with her. She also said that she would like to start seeing him another day a week (which made me tired just thinking about that) but said that if we wanted to we could team up with the OT and get two sessions done in one. That made me relax a little more. :) I couldn't imagine shoving more therapy into our week. We barely have enough time to fit in other doctors appointments as it is. Can I get an AMEN!?

Anyways, we have been having fun watching Landon progress and seeing his changes. We even got back into the bean box the other day to have some fun. He really liked slapping the beans and making them all fly out of the box...which was not-as-much-fun for mom and dad to clean up. I guess that's the sacrifice for a little fun. :)

I don't think that I've mentioned on here but Braydon and I decided to take advantage of the $8,000 tax credit for new home buyers and buy a house. We're super excited to get out of this itty-bitty house and into something we can grow with. We will be moving sometime between mid-September and mid-October. Since we are building it we won't have an exact closing date until next month. We're just moving to the next town so it won't be that far away and it will actually be closer to some of the stuff we need to be near...like the hospital. :) If you want to look at the floor plan of our new house, or are just curious you can go to the builders website: www.omahanewhomes.com Go to "find your home" at the top and click on "by collection". On the next page, go to the Gallery collection and click on view floorplans. Our floorplan is called "Chase"...it's a 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bath. I will be taking pictures as it is being built and posting them so you all may see. We went by there the other day and the framing had been completed with walls up, so they are moving right along. :)

Well, I'll keep everyone posted about more changes with Landon. We are having Braydon's family come to visit this week, so that will be fun. His two sisters haven't met Landon yet, and Bonnie hasn't seen, or heard, about Landon since she left last month. So we're excited to see if she will cry when she sees him (which I'm sure she will). :) I know I would. :)

P.S. Thank you to all the people that sent Landon birthday presents. We got a few more after I posted the last blog so I made sure to take some pictures...
OH! Thanks to Heather Pleak for getting Landon the book "Snuggle Puppy" which involves me singing to my son....I'm sure he loves that! ha ha ha!!!



---That Superman shirt is so fitting!!!