Chew on This

Well, we're back into the groove of being home from Cali. Will slept like a champ on Sunday and the jet lag didn't seem to bother him too much. He seemed happy to be back at school and the teachers and kids gave him a warm welcome on Monday. Will brought his cousin Carson a Stanford Frisbee and it was quite the hit!

So you may be wondering if we've noticed any changes since Will started the drug. Nope! We don't anticipate seeing anything. We simply hope that the brain scan on week 13 will show improvement.

His wonderful OT, Risa, did chew therapy tonight with Will and he was able to say her name Re-sa really clearly. I'm sure Aunt Lisa will be happy to hear that he can say "Le-sa" now too. :-) We'll have to make a phone call soon. Speaking of chewing. We had a big milestone tonight!!! Will ate a Ritz cracker tonight. He took a clear bites, chewed, swallowed and didn't choke!

This is a HUGE milestone for us. One of the classic symptoms of a mito disorder is hypotonia - poor muscle tone. That means even muscles in his mouth. Chewing is not just crunching food up - that's actually called munching :-) Chewing is defined as moving food laterally from left to right in your mouth and then munching on each side. He's a pro now at munching and the chewing is getting less sporadic and much more frequent.

So, while I continue to be paranoid every time he puts something more than liquid in his mouth, I'm getting a lot more confident in his ability - I never thought he would actually not choke on a cracker. We had a REALLY bad choking on a tortilla chip. I vowed off anything like that in the future, but now here we are, two years since we started solids, we chew! One day we're going to have another kid and it's going to be weird to have a child who (hopefully!) chews!

In other classic Will antics - his language and vocabulary has just shot through the roof. The other day he actually said, "Please help me mommy." Four words that made sense and were clearly spoken. He continues to imitate and mimic words and actions. My least favorite recent word acquisition is four letters and starts with "s" and ends in "t" - he picked that one up from dear ol' dad this morning :-) Luckily, there are lots of things that rhyme in case he decides to whip that out in public. Some of his new favorite words include firetruck, firehouse, suitcase and hotel. Can't imagine where those came from! :-)