7.11.11 - Abilities and Acitvities

As of last Friday, Liam is currently noted as being up to speed on all his developmental stages!!  YAY!  We had ECI come back out with the Speech Therapist to re-evaluate him on his development and feeding and he was not behind in ANY areas!  In fact, he even scored at 30 months for social/emotional (who knew?!) and 24 months for cognitive skills...GO LIAM!!  The other areas were scored as follows: (this is more for keeping track of this via blog-baby book for me!)
Adaptive - 21 months
Motor - 21 months
Communication - 21 months
I was very pleased to say the least, of this news.  Therefore, we currently do not need ANY therapy services, other than the swallowing issue.  This was great news for us and I am SO proud of Liam...he just proves to amaze us each day!

The Speech Therapist did recommend we take Liam for another swallow study and eval at the Baylor Clinic for his swallowing.  Liam still cannot seem to tolerate thin liquids, and we need to figure out what's going on.  Baylor does the Vital-Stim therapy that he had earlier this year, and I am thinking we may need to continue this therapy.  He has also had a lingering wet cough for about 4 weeks now, that may just be allergies, but also could be aspiration...We are going to the Pulmonologist today to see what they think.

Our nutritionist also came out Friday for a weigh-in.  Liam has not gained anything in the past 4 months, but she didn't seem overly concerned, given the fact that during that time, he started walking (and running now!) and has been weaned off tube feedings.  She said this transition period should be coming to an end, so she really wants to see Liam gain something soon...And so do we!  She gave me a handout with tips on upping calories, which we already do a lot of...So I am just praying God takes over and multiplies the calories that he does eat and gets him to grow!! 

Lastly, Liam has been enjoying some of the activities we've been doing each day!  We are currently working on basic colors, shapes, numbers 1-5 and animals and noises....He is having a blast!  The first game we did was using printouts of animal pictures.  Then I give him basic instructions, like "Go stand on the bear"...It's amazing how simple this was, but how much he loved it! 

We did the same game, but with colored pieces of paper...super easy, but very effective!

I think I was wearing him out!!  Sleepy boy!

We were also told by the Speech Therapist that cup training would be good for Liam right now.  Still using thickened liquids, but start teaching him how to drink from an open cup...Things went just as I presumed they would on his first go...more on him than IN him, but he did great given it was his first effort!  Not to mention he LOVED drinking from his cup!

Well have to keep him in the kitchen for this training!!  Whew, it got REALLY messy!!