The Holidays

We had a very nice Christmas, unfortunately I was very sick and to prove how sick I was I didn't even take any pictures! Dane was more interested in boxes and wrapping paper but he did have a great time. New Years Eve was spent with my friend Jill and her family, we played games and hung out...we were home by midnight because we are big nerds! Dane rang in the New Year sleeping at Pap Pap and Grandma's then Mom and Dad came over for dinner on New Years Day, it was nice and quiet and I loved it! Before I start telling you about Dane's milestones, our family celebrated another milestone with Gage's 18th birthday! This is a picture of him, and yes, that is his cutey girlfriend sitting next to him!
It was surprise party and I think that he had a great time! Happy Birthday Gage!

Dane's language continues to take off! He is doing a great job with speech...as a matter of fact his speech therapist has discharged him from speech! Wow! Way to go Dane! We had another evaluation with Phx Childrens and she scored him age appropriate for ALL areas! She was very impressed with how well he continues to do and now he can be followed by the developmental pediatrician if my insurance will pay for it. We have bumped up his physical therapy to twice a month, when Miss M was here last week she noticed some left side weakness and she feels that with his age and ability to follow simple directions he will allow her to get some good exercises in to help strengthen his left side. I am waiting to get a referral to go back to the Neurologist to discuss getting Dane's MRI done, now that he is bigger I feel more comfortable with the thoughts of him going under anesthesia. Though he is doing really good, if the scan shows something then we can have a diagnosis of mild cerebral palsy which would qualify him for more services. Not that that is what we want, but the reality is that once he is out of the states birth to three program we won't qualify for the states help...unless we have some sort of diagnosis. We don't want him to start to struggle with his fine motor skills when he is like 4 or 5 and not have the help available to him. What we are hoping for is that the scan shows nothing (which would be yet another miracle...but hey, my God is in that business) then we just go about raising our little blessing like any other little one...except no matter what happens I'll know the truth of how blessed he has been!
We are going to continue feeding therapy, he eats like a champ but still has choking episodes. He an episode this morning and ended up vomiting...no fun for anyone involved. He seems to choke mostly on saliva, but hopefully she can give us insight. She comes this Thursday so we will see how it goes.

I love this picture, I know for those of you that aren't in family you can not fully appreciate this raised eyebrow look...but it cracks me up! He looks like my brother David in this picture!

There is my happy boy!

This was Dane running laps around our kitchen island! Before he could maybe run two laps before the coughing and wheezing, but now he can run for about five minutes before we have to have him take a rest. He is only doing one breathing treatment a day, and we haven't had to give him the albuterol treatment in months...those little lungs are starting to toughen up! We are entering into the bad part of RSV season, so please pray that he stays healthy!

We are gearing up for the big March of Dimes walk coming up in April, we are hoping to have an even bigger team than last year! Details to come...