Dawson dancing

Sorry this video is a little sideways.. but you get the picture.. He loves playing just dance on the Wii so we wanted to share some of the hottest new moves out there today. He gets his dancing skills from me btw

Hope you enjoy half as much as we did

Jeff

Bop It

Yeah, were just showing off now. Dawson loves this little game and developmentally... Its fantastic for him. Its just over the last few days that he has gotten this good at it. He has almost beaten MY high score HA!!! ( Oh and at the end of the video, listen to him say " concentrate"

We are soooooo proud of the progress he is making. He continues to be on a slow but very positive and very methodical climb out from under the fog and damage of the seizures. There are so many people in his life that are affecting him positively right now. None more right now than our children's minister at our church. Their paths crossing was specifically designed by God and we are so thankful for "Miss Brandi". We have witnessed a true connection of sorts between these two and we thank God for her daily. She has been able to bring him.... out of his shell so to speak in social situations... Its hard to explain... Its just one of those God things ya know..

Speech continues to do really well... His newest thing is to ask " What?" after most anything that is said to him. Even though we know he heard us very plainly, you get the Whaaaattt??? His other new favorite phrase that were NOT so thrilled about is
" Poo Poo".. So i know it sounds funny, but this has been going on for several weeks. We kinda figured he would get tired of saying it but so far no luck. I try not to laugh, but hey im a guy, and there aren't many things more funny than listening to him sing Happy Birthday with every other word being Poo Poo..... ( see, its hard not to laugh right??)

Anyway, we are all doing really well. Basking in God's blessings and marveling daily at his healing hand.

Today is 311 days seizure free!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT????!!!!!

Much love to all

Jeff

Little Fish

When your little one takes a seizure med that wont allow them to sweat, and cool their body temps... and its 176 degrees with a humidity of 276%........... and the heat index feels like 198...... about the only thing you can do is swim.... and does he ever love to swim!!

Come to find out, Dawson is quite the little fish. There are several times during any given day that you will hear that little sweet voice say... " I go swimming today??" Put him in the pool with his Puddle Jumpers ( which I highly recommend) and the kid is perfectly content. Floating around ( even swimming some) all over the pool. Thats my little guy!!

So not much new going on around here.. Ashlyn and Katelin have been with us for two weeks and I love having them home with me. What a special time and Dawson continues to do really well. Lots and lots of fun positive things going on around here concerning him.

More pics coming soon.... stayed tuned and as always thanks for your prayers!!

Jeff

Freedom and the miracle of Dawson

Had this stuff brewing in my mind for a while...

I find it nearly impossible to put into words.... to explain to you using only the 26 letters that are available to me....what we have been seeing with Dawson lately. There is just too much!! The past two weeks have brought on another speech explosion. I think I see a pattern developing with speech. He seems to go for a month or two at a time kinda stagnate and then BOOM!! literally a speech explosion. I love it!

He is putting words together very nicely now to form sentences and his communication skills are soaring right now. Here are some of the things were hearing these days:

" Why is daddy crying?" ( I was only pretending to cry) " I told daddy stop it" " I want to go to church" " Wait a second" ( as he sticks a finger way up in the air) " I want to pull the kitty off" " I eat in playroom" " I want to see Ashlyn and Katelin"
on and on and on.... What a blessing it is to see him functioning in this manner.

For those of you who have followed this story for a while, you will remember the days of seizures and violence that he displayed. We always felt a source of the violence was the inability to communicate with us. He would obviously get very frustrated as he mumbled his version of words and we played the guessing game as to what in the world he was trying to say. Guess wrong, and you were as good as dead as far as he was concerned. Today, life is so much different. After literally thousands of seizures since he was 2 months old... Our little guy is talking, and he is learning.

This past week was Vacation Bible School for the kids at our church. A huge test for Dawson. We were somewhat apprehensive as to how Dawon would do. This is really the first time he has been in an extended " social situation" and we just werent sure what to expect. Would he play?? would he have fun? would he even behave?? The answer to all of that was a resounding YES!! Not only did he play, but he played hard. He didn't just have fun.. he had a blast.. and behavior was not an issue all week. The miracle of Dawson.... a little boy ravaged by numerous seizures daily, healed by the hand of God, is doing AND saying all the things that we were told he would probably never do and say..

The 4th of July is about freedom and celebrating that freedom. There are many types of freedom that we are celebrating this year. The freedom to worship as we please and the freedom that living in this country provides us. We are certainly thankful for the men and women who provide us with that freedom. But we are also celebrating the freedom of seizures. The monster that lurked in Dawson's brain. The monster who robbed him and this family of joy and happiness. The monster who took away his ability to function normally, and replaced it with developmental delays is dead... Now that is TRUE freedom, and today we celebrate that freedom.

Today is day 282 of seizure freedom. There is a lot to be said for that... its the miracle of Dawson. A special needs child who is indeed VERY special!!!

Developmental Study

This week carried us to Birmingham to have a developmental study done. Dawson's Neuro wanted us to do this to give us a baseline of where he is developmentally and do a yearly sorta thing to see how he's progressing. It also serves the purpose of pin pointing weaknesses for his teachers at school as well as us to work on.

Dawson cooperated fully thank goodness and the entire thing went really really well as far as the testing goes. We went into this study knowing that there are issues. It's not like we needed to be told. There are obviously things that are not "normal" but what is amazing is how FAST the things that once wern't normal.... all of a sudden are pretty close to being normal.

Language skills for example... And understand " Language skills" encompasses much more than just the ability to say words. That obviously is a big part of it. But understanding language, and having the ability to communicate verbally is a big part of it.

Just months ago, this kid had ZERO language practically. He could speak a word at a time and that was pretty limited to 25 to 30 words. And here we are 264 days of seizure freedom and he scored very close to age appropriate for Language skills. Pretty amazing right?? I thought so too..

Non verbal skills...... thats another issue.. Still lots of problems in this area and working puzzles and that sort of thing.. BUT... he is constantly getting better, he is learning, he is HAPPY!!! OH BOY is he happy!! This kid is a huge cut up now, hopping around laughing, singing, talking in 4 and 5 word sentences left and right... The Seizure monster has been killed and life has never been better!!

Above is a picture of Dawson bowling. We went with our church group last night and Dawson ( with a teeny tiny wee little bit of help from daddy) bowled a 101.. Not too shabby!!

The kid is pretty amazing, the change in him post being healed has been the most fun to watch.. All I ever really truly wanted is for him to be happy.... and he is

Praise God!!!

Jeff

Yard work is hard work

Once again, sorry for such a delay in posting. In this case, no news is good news!! Dawson continues to truck along and is doing better than ever!! Speech is incredible!! His communication skills literally grow every day now. Hes asking questions, saying sentences, telling us what he wants.... Its just incredible what a brain that isn't seizing can do.

AND.........

drum roll please.......

We are finally potty training!!!!!!!!! yessssssssssssss He is doing number 1 on the big potty on a regular basis and is even asking to go potty. We are finally on our way. God has certainly blessed us. Weve seen the worst of times and now were seeing the best of them.

Please dont misunderstand me. For some it might seem as though we are bragging.. We are not.. There are people out there who read this blog who child is seizing right at this moment. Our hearts remain with you all. Allison and I were watching a video just last night of a little girl in the midst of a horrible seizure. We both just sat in complete silence as tears ran down our faces watching this beautiful little girl. We remember all too well what thats like. Seizures forever etched in our minds. To me there is nothing worse. Our prayers continue with those who continue to suffer constant attacks from the seizure monster.

But people DO need to hear that Infantile Spasms ARE beatable. People need to know about the fight AND the victory!!

Today is day 235 with no seizures and my son, who was robbed of the ability to communicate or think just counted to 15 and asked for us to give him pizza..

Praise be to God!!

Jeff

showing off

over 12,500 seizures and they thought he would never be smart!!

Dawson counting to 10.. take 10 seconds and enjoy a miracle