A little bit of exciting news

Today we had an adventerous day full of things to do. Landon cooperated well while we took him to his PT appointment and then back to the house for a bite to eat, and then back across town to his appointment with Dr. Quinlan (his ear, nose, and throat doctor).

We started with Penny at PT, working on crawling up stairs. Like most other times Landon protested, but finally did the stairs a few times. Once we got to the top he toppled over which sent him into a crying fit. He cried for a good five minutes or so to let us know how mad he was. The whole time Penny and I are trying to get him interested in something else while he just stood there sobbing. Finally, a good long hug helped him get over the spill and we moved on to walking.

Today, instead of using the Kid Walk chair (that's in the video below), we had him try walking by himself. He did really well with his balance, standing by himself for a few minutes at a time. We had him walk down the hallway to where there is an elevator. He has this new facination with watching elevators open and close and watching the people get off and on. He likes to push the button and finds it interesting when he gets off and the scenery looks different than when he got on. Anyways, so we used the elevator as motivation to get him to walk on his own. He did really good, walking 20-30 steps at a time all by himself!!! We were so excited!! We just have to continue to encourage him to walk on his own while still working on getting him to crawl. We also have to still work with him on transitioning from his belly, to sitting, to standing and walking...but not always all at once. :) He is also still doing really well with sitting, which gives us hope about him walking.

When we went to visit with Dr. Quinlan today we had to give him an overview of what Landon was doing now because he hadn't seen him since before the last Denver trip. We had ran into him a few times during therapy session while Landon was walking around the hospital, but never got a chance to fill him in. He had compared notes with Dr. LaCroix (Landon's pediatrician), and got the medical explanation of what happened, but didn't know where he was now. As we spoke to him about what our plan might be, we all decided that we thought giving Landon a break from procedures and letting him grow was probably our best bet. After what happened, me and Braydon want to enjoy Landon and aren't in any rush to get him "better". Right now we think he is beautiful and wonderful the way he is. If he is destined to get better then that would be great, but we want to let him be him for a while. I think he deserves that with all that he has been through in his life.

Also, Dr. Quinlan decided that he wanted to try and see how Landon would do if he put his finger over his trach. Landon did really good at first, breathing just fine and then he started to get fidgity and was trying to take Dr. Quinlan's hand off his trach. Dr. Quinlan was impressed with how he did, but said that it didn't mean that Landon was ready for his trach to be taken out. He would need to monitor him while he slept too which is different than just sitting and breathing to make sure that Landon's blood oxygen level didn't drop. He didn't talk to us about doing any of that right now cause he wants Landon to keep growing and see how the anatomy of his mouth changes in the next few months. He told us he wanted to do a brochoscopy on Landon by October or November which can be paired with getting another MRI done and a hearing test done (since he hasn't had one since the incident). Also, if need be, we can get the dentist to do work on him while he's sedated. But we aren't even sure about the dentist yet cause Landon hasn't seen one yet! ;) haha

So I was pretty excited that Dr. Quinlan had been so optimistic about Landon's trach and his mouth. He had said that he was able to see more of the back of Landon's mouth than he ever had before. It was so nice to go to the doctor and have some good news! The light at the end of our very long tunnel got a little brighter today! :)