07/30/2024
Landon's then and now.
Landon
only related to numbers.
related to our cat, Shadow. He wouldn't talk to us but he would talk to her.
barely talked.
didn't care about relationships.
jumped off of every piece of furniture in our house.
jumped into bodies of water.
jumped off the highest thing he could on his playground set.
would escape from the house and take off. We ended up bolting everything in the house and baby-proofing everything that we felt we lived in Fort Knox.
almost got hit by a bus.
lots of excessive jumping and free falling that we designed his bed to withstand the impact.
would go without sleep. There were many months where the lack of sleep got the best of us. That's when we had to get him on medication.
he would strip his clothes off when they got wet.
he would bite and hit.
hiding. He did that up until Covid. After Covid and things started going back to normal, he didn't do that quite as much.
he ran off during his cousin's wedding.
hated to eat out.
we got a call from the school almost every day until he graduated from High School.
had speech services up until high school.
Pt services until we left KY and we still had some within the school system in Knightdale.
Ot services until maybe middle school.
Psychologist and psychiatrist evaluations especially when we went through a period we thought he was schizophrenic.
TODAY:
LOVES and hugs people. He gets so excited when he sees someone he knows. He hugs people he feels safe and comfortable with. We knew that Restoration Church was where we belonged because the first time he met Pastor Roy, he hugged him. He has never done that at any church we belonged to or the church I used to worked at. Everyone LOVES Landon. I don't go anywhere without someone asking me about him or telling me they saw him. Very rarely does he tell me he doesn't like someone. If he does, they are the ones that are loud and noisy. He is the friendliest loving young man. He has an innocent heart of gold.
Doesn't like to leave the house unless there is a reason. He looks forward to STEP. One thing we taught him was to be spontaneous. Now, we can surprise him with something at the last minute and it doesn't bother him at all. We taught him that things in life change so he responds to change fairly well unless it's too much change like what happened last year.
Landon is respectful around water. He is careful, doesn't run, takes his time, and lets others go down the water slide before he does.
We still hear him jumping around in his bed but not like he used to. He used to like to sleep under his bed or in the closet but now he prefers to be in winter PJs during the summer months covered under all his blankets. How he is not dying from heat, I'll never know.
The kid that wouldn't sleep, sleeps all the time. I think he is making up for the many years of sleepless nights.
His love of numbers continues today. He loves simple algebra, designed his own sudoku puzzles, and stats. At one point he had the most impressive baseball Excel stat sheet he designed himself that would make anyone love to get their hands on it.
He has one specific interest. Anything, everything baseball. He will follow all the sports seasons but baseball literally knocks it out of the park. That's why ABLE Recreation means a lot to him. He knows almost everything about any major league baseball player and he has his favorites. His favorite team has been the Arizona Diamondbacks and until this day we have no idea where it came from.
He can have a conversation with you. The child we could barely get a word out of, sometimes will go on for quite awhile. Rambling along and everyone is so patient with him while he rambles about past, present, and future stuff all in one breath. When he gets home from STEP and I ask about his day, I'm more exhausted from the conversation than he is.
He manages himself very well and can regulate himself to a point. He has his limits. Taking him out for a day can be very challenging. He will do well as long as there is a point to it all. Such as going grocery shopping, and going out which as you saw in the past he hated, we actually had to curb his eating out because he wanted to eat out every day. At home, he goes to bed somewhere around 9 unless he is extremely worn out. When we are on vacation or visiting he is in bed exactly at 8 to escape overwhelming situations. When we do visit his contact with everyone is very brief and then he retreats into a room to be alone unless it's time to eat or if we are playing a board game. Socializing for long periods is very hard on him.
He still has his occasional behaviors and attitudes. Just like all of us, we have our bad days except he can't express what happened so we play 20 questions with him. We can't drill him for too long or he gets upset with us.
Hygiene is not one of his strengths. That is a twice-a-day issue with him.
He is easy-going, flexible, and will try just about anything. There are some things he will tell us he will never do again.
He's such a joy to be around. All I have to say is Landon can you please empty the dishwasher and he will either say yes, Marvarneous my love, or yes mother, or yes father (I'm not your father). Very rarely is he belligerent. If he is, he has had an off day.
I wouldn't trade it for a million years!
