Santa Claus is coming to town!

We had some fun times today! The rehab department at Children's Hospital did a Christmas party at a local hotel and we went to join in the festivities. They also had Santa there, which was an extra bonus. :) We haven't ever taken Landon to see Santa, and have heard some bad experiences from parents that take their kids too early. So we decided to wait till Landon was a little older so he wouldn't freak out about some weird guy in a red suit.

All week we've been telling him about Santa and how he brings toys. He's been watching cartoons that have Santa in them, and I really think he's starting to understand. Today we kept telling him that he was going to see Santa, and Braydon even mentioned that if Landon gave him a big hug that Santa would give him a present. :) Landon was excited and shook his head yes whenever we would ask if he was going to see Santa and take a picture with him. I was really curious to see how he would actually do.

They had lots of little games at the party for the kids to play and things to do. We did a couple of the little games so that Landon could get some stickers (which we all know he loves). I stood in line for Santa, and was watching as some families had to back out at the last minute cause their kids were crying. I was hoping that wouldn't be Landon....and it wasn't! He was such a big kid taking a picture with Santa!! He sat in his lap, Santa gave him a new toy car, Landon said thank you, and he sat on the floor and played with it until we left. He did sooo good! Here's Landon's first picture with Santa:


Here's a couple more of Landon getting to play some of the games. Their theme was the game Candy Land, so all of the games were related to the game in some way. This one was supposed to represent the character Plumpy that has plums and a plum tree. Ashley was there, and helped Landon with throwing beanbags onto the plum tree. The beanbags were supposed to represent the plums. Landon just walked up there, stuck them on, and seemed content with that. :)


The next one was Gloppy the Chocolate Monster. They had the littler kids ride in a tub to go pick up a sticker at the other side. It was really cute and Landon had fun riding in the tub. He looks so cute with just his head popping out of the top. :)


Other than that, Landon has been doing really well. He's been such a lovebug lately and wants someones attention 24/7. We've gone to therapy this week and have been really working Landon's right hand with Chelli, and working on crawling up onto chairs or into someones lap with Penny. Landon's doing really well learning both. He still prefers his left hand to his right, but we've noticed him using it more for play and also for function. It's been a nice progress. The chair we are still getting the hang of, but we are making progress.

Ashley has been working on Landon's speech book, which I'm not sure that I've mentioned before. It's basically a notebook that has a bunch of different pictures that represent toys, actions (like brushing your teeth), TV shows, or foods with velcro on the back. Landon uses it by giving you the picture of something to communicate what he wants. He does so well with it and has moved up to pages of things instead of just a couple of choices. Ashley is also spending some time testing Landon on his communication skills. She started on Tuesday doing the receptive part of the test to see what Landon understands. He did awesome on it and we only had to stop a couple of times in one hour. We were very impressed! Next week we're going to be working on the expressive part, which will probably be where Landon is going to struggle. It will, in the end, give us an estimation as to where Landon is developmentally with his speech (which we know he's not up to par), but will also give us an idea on what we need to be working on with him. We're also going to start introducing letters to practice saying with him. I'm hoping that he will catch onto this cause I would really like to hear him express himself better. Cross your fingers for us!!

Well, other than that, and the Christmas season here, we've been a busy family. :) I'll try to do another update before Christmas if we have stuff going on. We're supposed to get more snow this week, but we're hoping it isn't going to be a lot.