Life as we live it. . .: 13 Months--Making a Mess!!

One of the greatest blessings we have received from Koby is his ability to give us a better perspective in all of our aspects of life.
The two of us often find ourselves focusing on what is going "wrong" in our parental roles. Our kids don't do this, or don't do that. Or they are ALWAYS making messes constantly.

But as Koby makes progress we celebrate everything. And last week he made his first mess. Usually we lay him on a blanket in our family room and he stays mostly still. He roles around a little bit but doesn't have the coordination yet to do much else. But he was able to grab the diaper basket and push it over. Oh this was just the best. Wait, am I really saying that? We are happy that a child of ours made a mess? Yes it is such great news for us. It means he is progressing enough to knock something over. It means he recognized that the basket was in his way so he did something about it. Bravo to Koby and hoorah for our Warrior making a mess!

Koby also made it to Costco without his car seat for the first time. Normally we have to keep him buckled down because he didn't have the strength or coordination to sit up. But with Krew's help he did it!

Just look at that excitement. This was like a ride at Disneyland to him. He giggled and grinned the entire time. Krew had to hold him up while the cart was being pushed. They are such good brothers to each other.

He was quite exhausted by the end!

Koby continues to progress. Still being fed through his g-tube. He is now receiving a blended diet of vegetables and other good food. It's the thickness of cake batter, which requires a lot of force to get it through the tube. He still spits it up but is getting bigger. He's almost 18 pounds. He smiles all the time. His neck is floppy but he can hold it up for short bursts of time, maybe 5-10 seconds at once. His spastic movements are much less frequent.

We are working on getting him to sit up on his own. He's not there yet but he's trying. He can sit up for 10-15 seconds now. We practice feeding him by mouth twice a day. He hasn't figured it out but he doesn't refuse it either. It's takes a lot of concentration to figure out what to do once the food is in his mouth that it mostly ends up on his clothes or Bibb. But we can tell he is trying to understand.

He's also had four of his teeth break through.

We tried a candy cane. He didn't care for it much :)

He doesn't have the strength or coordination to walk but he does put some weight on his feet if we help balance him.

We are so fortunate. Koby qualified to double his therapies to four per week. Two physical therapies and two occupational therapies. And he also has the feeding therapies once per week and developmental and a speech twice per month. He also is trying to vocalize more and his greatest success of vocalizing comes when listening to Sharalee's cousin sing in the amazing singing group Vocal Point. We listen to them so much that he recognizes their songs now! (We love you Kyle Lemperle)