More About Milestones, Update on Progress

I know I've been talking about milestones a lot recently, but it's because Jaxson is doing better than he ever has in his life. Which means that he's surpassing milestones at a much faster pace than before, which is amazing to watch! There will be an album of photos uploaded with this blog because there's just so much to share!

Jax managed to have all three of his home-based appointments this week! That one's amazing because there's always something coming up. But he did, and at each appointment he impressed me with things he was able to do and understand.

On Monday, Miss Jennifer came over for speech. Jax worked on putting things in order, recognizing an action from a picture, using his words to get what he wants, and recognizing facial expressions. Seriously, he did fabulous! Putting pictures of an action in order is a hard thing, and he didn't get them all, but got more than I thought he would. He used his words much more appropriately, recognized several actions from pictures and started to understand the difference between a smile and a frown. He had a speech appointment on Thursday at NCH as well, and with Miss Mary Jax started referring to himself as "me" or "I" instead of "Jaxson" in the third person. He also recognized more farm animals!

Yesterday, OT came to the house to work with Jax and play. He did some coloring, he recognized that Elmo was jumping in his picture, he stacked items with ease and had no trouble with the wooden puzzle Miss Dara brought. We also practiced throwing and catching, which is going to take some work with his awful balance and coordination!

Today, Miss Kathy came over to work on communication and social skills. Jaxson successfully clipped several frogs to their matching color on a piece of paper, matched shapes drawn on clothespins in a similar task, was not interested in coloring at all, and he worked more on recognizing an action in a photo, matching toy items with what was happening in a book, and flipping frogs into a bowl. There's a video of him flipping the frogs, which I took because it's seriously amazing. I don't know if I ever thought he'd be able to do something like that, it's totally not easy even for a typical kid, but he tackled it first with his finger and did even better with his thumb.

Jaxson impresses me all the time. He is so independent and wants to do everything that we do, even eat when he's feeling well. Not meals or anything, but a few nibbles here and there. Something is better than nothing! He is full of life and love and energy and spunk and an ornery grin to get him out of serious trouble! He's amazingly perfect and doing so many things we once couldn't even consider. I mean, when he was born, the doctors didn't know how long he'd live, let alone what kind of life he would have. Now look at him. Vibrant and strong, a warrior to the bone who continues to defy all odds and win battles he could have easily lost.

Our family is on the rise, finally. Four years of hard work, patience, scraping by and barely getting out of bed in the morning have given way to a much more relaxing life. There are still a ton of concerns with Jax, lots of things we are watching and communicating with doctors about. But there's so much to celebrate, I don't want to talk about the rest. Jax is happy, he's as healthy as he's going to get  and always and forever my little lover boy cuddlebug. :)

~Life is not the way it's supposed to be, it is the way it is. It's how you cope with it that makes the difference. -Unknown