Hey everyone, wow has it been a long time!!! Keegan is doing pretty good!! He will be turning 4 at the end of August (which is so hard to believe!!) He did a month of summer Pre-k and loved it!! Knowing that he really enjoys it makes it easier for me to send him to Pre-k full time come this fall!! We also have a walker ordered for him and we are now just waiting for it to come in!! We're really hoping that the walker will help him take off with his walking; which he has improved on greatly!! Keegan is also officially a big brother! We welcomed Karson Xavier into the world on July 15th at 11:20AM and he weighed 7lbs 14.5oz and is 21 inches long!! Keegan loves giving him hugs and kisses so it's pretty cute!! I hope everyone is having a great summer and I'll try and update more often, things tend to get pretty chaotic around here!!
I can not believe I have not posted since October!! I apologize for that, things have been pretty hectic around here!! Keegan is doing wonderful! He is 25 pounds now and still 36 inches long. He has 6 different therapies through the week but I have to say pool therapy is his favorite!! We also have a lot of new equipment to help him get stronger at home. He has leg braces and a stander that he works in everyday. I can't wait for the first day for him to take his first steps all by himself! Things have been hectic for me, we're expecting another little boy in July so between taking care of Keegan, being a high risk pregnancy this time around, and helping coach softball; I'm pretty pooped!!! I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying this nice weather we've been having!! I know we are, Keegan loves his walks!!
Well September flew by!!! Keegan is still doing great, he's been cranky these past couple weeks but medically he is doing great!!! He got his leg braces last week and hasn't really seemed to mind them! He also got fitted for his stander earlier this week so hopefully we can get that in the next couple of months!! Other than that he's just been keeping me super busy by driving him to all his therapies and working with him at home!!! Hope everyone is having a great week!
It seems like yesterday but in all reality Keegan turned 3 a week ago!! I just can't believe it!!!! He has really started to show improvements this summer and I'm very anxious to see what next year brings!!! He got fitted for leg braces and once those come in, he'll get fitted for a stander to help him learn to stand!! We're also still waiting for the paperwork to get done to order him a kidcart, which is a wheelchair/stroller in one! Which will be very helpful for him in school next year!!! Keegan always seems to amaze me everyday!!
Wow I can not believe that summer has come and gone already!!! Seems like it just started!!! Keegan is doing amazing with his glasses and since his last eye surgery. He turns 3 on the 30th of this month and I can't believe how fast it's gone by!!! We're transitioning him into school programs. He won't be going to pre-k yet but he will be getting therapies through the school this year plus he will be keeping his Physical, occupational, and water therapy that he gets in Quincy 3xs a week so come September I will be Keegan's own personal driver everywhere!! Haha I hope everyone is having a great summer!!! The picture is Keegan during some developmental therapy and he was exhausted at this point!!! Keegan also got fitted for leg braces a couple of weeks ago and once those get in, he will get fitted for a stander!!! Hopefully all his new equipment can help him get stronger this next year!
Sorry that it has been so long since I posted an update!! Keegan is doing great! We went and saw a vision specialist and they did over three hours of testing! Keegan will be having eye surgery again on July 28th to help strengthen his eye muscles! He is also getting glasses to help with his vision yay!! We're already calling him the little professor! He will also be going back to have some more vision testing done to see how he does with tracking!!! We are going to the Cerebral Palsay Center on Monday for testing there, then off to the eye center again to get his eye measurements for surgery, and then up to same day surgery to get him checked out and then depending on how tired Keegan is or how good of a mood he is we may be going to the St. Louis Zoo!!! As soon as we get his glasses in I will promise to get some new pictures up!!!
I can't believe another month has flown by. We had our March of Dimes walk this past Saturday and our family raised $530!!! It turned out to be a pretty good day, it sprinkled on us a bit but at least it was warm out this year!! Keegan is doing wonderful! He is starting to say Mama, Dada, and Ba Ba a whole lot more!!! He has also hit a huge milestone because his current weight is 21 POUNDS 12 OUNCES!!!! Yay!!! And he's also 32 inches long!!! So excited that he finally weighs over 20 pounds! His has been constantly improving on his therapis also! We also found out today that Keegan got accepted by a program called Littlest Heroes Project! What they do is take kids with special needs or with health problems and take pictures of him and the family for free, so it's a wonderful program and if you get a chance go check out thier site it's
www.littlestheroesproject.orgI think that's about it for now!!!
Welcome to Holland
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability-to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this...
When you're going to have a baby it's like planning a fabulous vacation to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, The Michelangelo David, the Gondolas in Venice, you may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says Welcome to Holland.Holland?!? you say. What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I have dreamed of going to Italy.But there has been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met.It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you have been there for a while and catch your breath, you look around....and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills...and Holland has tulips...Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is coming and going from Italy...and they're all bragging about the wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you are going to say Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned.And the pain of that will never, ever, ever ,ever go away...because the loss of that dream is very, very significant loss.But, if you spend the rest of your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, very lovely things...about Holland.
By Emily Pearl Kingsley 1987
