Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Famous Boy Times Three

Elijah made his third appearance in a newspaper today! This time he made it into the Star News, our local newspaper. It was awesome to see his little face in the paper again and we loved that they put so many photos in with the article. Now everyone can see how cute he is. We're thankful for the exposure - not only for Elijah and his miraculous story, but also for HBOT. Perhaps someone else will look into it and be helped by it. (If you want to see the online version, click here).

It hasn't escaped us that the article just came out today and is already outdated. Who knew that when we gave the interview about two weeks ago – that he would be walking by the time it was published? I –for one – am in still in shock that Elijah is walking. I have to pinch myself when I turn around and find our boy not only standing, but then walking away from me. I often have to drop whatever I am doing to follow him. It's crazy fun and I feel so blessed.

Speaking of crazy fun, it's been so amusing to show off Elijah's new walking skills to his therapists this week. We saw Elijah's D.O., Dr. Loafer, today and he called Elijah's walking "amazing." Yesterday was Elijah's clinic-based therapy and his PT and OT were blown away.

His OT was excited and I was thrilled when Elijah actually took some pegs out of board by himself. His fine motor skills remain the most delayed and we're hoping that once Elijah gets bored with walking, he will focus more on using his hands to grab and his mouth to speak.

Then we saw Elijah's PT. I set Elijah on the floor and said, "Do you want to see Elijah's new trick?" His PT was in shock when he not only took steps, but started walking around the room. She kept saying, "That is UNBELIEVABLE!" She admitted that she hadn't expected Elijah to be walking independently for quite awhile. She was impressed with his ability to turn while walking; "That's hard," she said. She also told me that most kids when they start walking take a couple of months to get into standing by themselves and he's doing it already! She told me all sorts of encouraging things, like she's never really worked with a child quite like Elijah. She also said that none of the rules seem to apply to Elijah. She watched Elijah walk around the room and told me that his walking looks great – that he looks like any other kid would look when taking steps and when he gets himself into standing. I think she was utterly shocked and amazed at this huge change in his development and told us, "Congratulations" when we left for home.

I wish I would've gotten some of those reactions this week on video! It's been a great week for our famous little guy.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Absolutely Awe-maze-ing!

When Elijah was still quite little, I made some modified goals for him. I never wrote them down; I just kept them in a file in my head. I wanted him to sit up by nine months, crawl at 12 months, and walk by two years. I was thrilled when he sat up at 8.5 months, but discarded the goals when he didn't crawl by a year. After that, I learned to relax a little and stopped trying to figure out when Elijah would do things. I can't even begin to describe how happy I was when he started to crawl. I still get a thrill seeing him crawling around the floor going from one room to the next. And the walking…I didn't know when that'd happen, but even with my crazy optimism, I believed it was still a long way away

At our last appointment with Dr. Nice Guy (Elijah's rehabilitation medicine doctor), he said he wanted to see us in three to four months. Elijah had just started crawling and I said, "Hey, maybe he'll be walking by then!" Dr. Nice Guy shrugged his shoulders and said something to the effect of, "Well, I suppose it's possible." It was obvious to us that he didn't expect Elijah to be walking in that amount of time, but being the Nice Guy he is, he was still…nice. J Let's just say we're looking forward to having Elijah walk into his office in early April!

I have to admit, though, even I didn't expect this so soon...

Elijah and I had quite the thrill showing his Early Intervention PT his new found skills this afternoon. I think the word she used was, "Amazing!" and I'm pretty sure we made her day. J

Yep, he's absolutely amazing all right. I wonder what God has in store for our little guy. If you want to know if prayers make a difference, just watch that video one more time, because somehow amazing doesn't even do it justice.

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