Hello everyone! We hope you had a WONDERFUL Christmas and are having a GREAT 2011 so far! We are having a blast! I cannot tell you how much fun it is to have a little toddler around the house! HE IS SOOOOO FUN!! He loved Christmas....or at least the wrapping paper :) He now has enough toys to last him for 5 years! He is loving his newfound freedom and loves to run up and down the hallway...and then up and down again. I call him my little wind-up toy...because once you put him down, he does not stop :) He is getting stronger and stronger everyday! He can now stand up all by himself from the middle of the floor. This may not seem like a BIG accomplishment, but to us, it is HUGE! This means his core is getting stronger, and with that, everything else gets stronger. His newest thing that he likes to do is to carry his toys from room to room. He no longer like to grab the 'small' toys, yet the ones that weigh half of his body weight! I hear grunting down the hall...then a big crash, then more grunting, and then he walks in the living room carrying his toy with all his might! It is quite the site to see. Dylan is still not a big talker...not really at all. He CAN say mamma and dadda, but does not do it very often. The only thing he says multiple times a day is 'da' (dog) and yiyyy (lily...our DOG!)....so, he pretty much loves the dog! So, since he is not talking yet, we have begun to learn signing. He has three signs down really well. MORE, PLEASE, and EAT. What else do you need, right?? It's hilarious because whenever we are in the vincinity of his high chair, he does the EAT sign and says ahhhhhhh....like 50 times a day! It cracks me up...he wants to eat all of the time!! This is a good thing in my eyes (but don't worry, I do not feed him 50 times a day). That brings us to the eating. He loves to eat...but it very picky about what he will eat. He is still not eating any type of solids. He will munch on baby crackers, but once a chunk comes off, he starts gagging and trying to fish it out of his mouth. I try to blend up foods, but if they are not 'baby food stage 2' consistency, he freaks out and acts like I am torturing him. As you can imagine, this is very frustrating. He is 21 months old and still eats all pureed food. I would do ANYTHING to have him eat normal food and sometimes meal time is so disheartening. We are working with therapists to train his mouth and muscles, but it's going to be a long process. So, if you think about it, please pray for me and for patience. THANKS SO MUCH!!Alrighty, on to the bad news. Dylan needs another eye surgery. This will be eye surgery #3. We went in last week to get his pressure checked and the pressure in his right eye was back up. The left eye was still stable, but my guess is that it too will follow in increased pressure (left eye had surgery one month after right eye). Originally, we thought the next step was to put in shunts, but there is still one procedure we can try before that. I am so bad with remember the procedures names, so I will just explain what it is in my 'mommy' terms. During the next surgery, the Dr. will take a laser and cauterize the outside of Dylan's eye, and that will in turn, hopefully reduce the pressure. The good news is that the Dr. could do both eyes in one day because Dylan won't need to wear a patch afterwards. This comes as great news to us because hopefully it will be a lot less traumatizing for Dylan. The surgery is on Thursday at 5pm at Phoenix Children's Hospital. We thank you in advance for your prayers! We can't stand to see him go through anymore surgeries, but we are thankful that there are surgeries available to help him. We probably will not know if the surgery was successful until at least a month later when they will check his pressure again. I will update with any news that we have. Thank you again for being loyal supporters and prayer warriors...WE COULD NOT DO THIS WITHOUT YOU!!
Taking it one day at a time,
The Praskins :)
