Our Sixteen-Month-Old is Famous

Our little man is officially sixteen months old! And at just sixteen months, Elijah has made his newspaper debut in the Dunn County News, a newspaper from our hometown. (If you want to get technical, this would actually be the second time he’s been in the paper - as we also announced his birth).

It was pretty exciting to see the little guy’s picture and story in the newspaper. If you’re interested, you can read the story here. We feel quite grateful that they wrote this article about Elijah and included his life story in our hometown paper. [I did want to make one clarification to the story. It said that Elijah can say, “mama” and “dada” and unfortunately he is not able to say those two wonderful words yet. Believe me, if he were, I’d be shouting the news from the rooftop! While Elijah did say “mama” once, he has not said it since. I have to believe that someday we won’t be able to get him to shut-up…I smile just thinking of it!].

If you read the article, you may have noticed that Elijah now has a benefit fund…

A Benefit Fund
We recently set up a Benefit Fund for Elijah to help offset the cost of therapy. We are tentatively planning to do another round of HBOT for Elijah in March, possibly coupled with intensive OT, PT and Speech Therapy. HBOT isn’t covered by insurance and only part of the OT and PT would be. As Elijah’s parents, we want to do as much for Elijah as we possibly can while he is still so young and his brain is still forming. So, we are starting the process of asking for donations and thinking of fundraiser ideas. If you have any thoughts or would like to help out, please let us know. We’ve also created a flier to ask for donations, which you can see here. If you’re willing, please disperse this flier as you see fit (i.e. put it on bulletin boards, etc). If you have nothing to give but prayers, that’s the most important gift of all. Please ask for success in our fundraising efforts.

Enough announcements - this is what happened in Elijahland last week…

Clinic-Based Therapy
Elijah’s PT was laughing about the fact that she practically had to chase Elijah around the room in the walker this week. “I’m going to have to take a nap after this Elijah!” she said in her loud, enthusiastic voice. And when we were leaving her for the day, his PT said something to the effect of, “He’s doing great!” and “He’s amazing!” I’d certainly have to agree with her. :)
Elijah is never as cooperative working with his OT as he is with his PT. Since he works with his OT immediately after his PT, he’s probably a bit tired from already working so hard. But, part of the issue is that he’s so focused on his gross motor skills (i.e. crawling and walking) that he doesn’t care much about anything else.

I was really excited by something his OT said this week. She mentioned that she thinks cognitively, Elijah is beyond the things we’re trying to teach him. He gets bored, he gets frustrated, and he decides that he’d rather do something else, namely jumping or walking. That’s really exciting as it’s says great things about his developing brain.

School-Based Therapy
Our lovely school OT encouraged me to get Elijah age-appropriate toys. Again, that’s so exciting! I have to remind myself to never underestimate Elijah.

Dr. Nice Guy
We also saw our Physiatrist, Dr. Nice Guy, for a follow-up appointment last week. He seemed pleased with Elijah’s progress and didn’t have anything to recommend other than to “keep doing what we’re doing.” Hmm, sometimes I wonder why we even visit doctors in the first place. Still, it’s nice to have uneventful appointments.

The Crawling Wonder
Finally, to end this extremely long journal entry…Imagine this…I take Elijah into our bedroom and set him on the floor so I can get dressed. He immediately starts fussing, bouncing up and down and has a mini temper tantrum. So, the next thing I know, he takes off crawling towards the door. Even though I haven’t been able to get dressed yet, I start to laugh. “Where are you going Elijah?” I ask. For some reason he doesn’t answer :) and keeps on crawling, takes a left and crawls down the hallway. He makes it to the top of the stairs, after being distracted by the power outlet. (I, of course, monitor him the entire time to make sure he doesn’t take a tumble down the stairs or electrocute himself). For those of you who are unfamiliar with our house, that’d be a good 15 foot crawl – woohoo! He keeps improving. He is our little crawling wonder, our newspaper star, our sixteen month little boy (where’d our baby go?!), our favorite snuggle bug. And yep, we sure do love him. I hope you’ve enjoyed my "novel"…

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