Doughnuts

Tad is doing amazingly well. By Friday afternoon, he was beginning to try and stand on his leg again. Saturday, he was cruising around furniture and crawling around, and even willing to stand on his own two feet again without holding on to anything or anyone.

Sunday, he was actually walking across rooms. He has a pronounced limp (as we knew he would), so he does teeter like a drunken sailor. He is still having major problems with his left knee. He will straighten it out just fine, but he will not bend it beyond the point that it was casted. If it gets even slightly flexed beyond that point, he cries in pain. So, when he walks, he drags the left leg because he’s not bending the knee to walk. But he’s getting around. It’s truly amazing and wonderful.

And Auntie found out the best way to get Tad to walk – doughnuts.

Our Sunday School director provides doughnuts for the teachers each week. She’s learned what Grandma and Gichan and Auntie’s favorites are, and after church is over, she always gives Gichan the leftover doughnuts, if he’ll take them.

There were a lot of doughnuts left yesterday, so Auntie gave both Ane and Tad half a chocolate doughnut as a treat. Tad especially relished his, and proved once again that food is a primary speech motivator to him. Auntie taught him to say doughnut before he finished his. He says “do-nat.”

There were still too many left, so Gichan went and got a bag and stuck some more doughnuts “for the kids” into it. The Webmaster took it, and Tad was cruising around the table in their Sunday School room until he saw his Daddy holding a bag of doughnuts. “Do-nat? Do-nat?” he said.

With his arms outstretched toward the bag full of sugary goodness, he then walked across the room, without falling, into the Webmaster’s waiting arms, in front of me, Auntie and Gichan. We all cheered for him – it was so exciting!! He got another doughnut later, though. I mean, he hadn’t even had lunch yet.

In the evening, Grandma, Gichan and Auntie came over for dinner, and he continued his quest toward full locomotion by walking unassisted, both inside and outside, playing on the big toy in the backyard and climbing back UP the slide, climbing all over the furniture – including reaching the top of the TV to grab a toy I’d stuck up there to hide from the little kids who were over on Saturday, and wrestling with Gichan. Tad really is getting back to being his normal self again. That he can do all of this in the matter of just a few days of the cast coming off is such a relief to us.

I think our monkey is back. If you want to see him perform any tricks, just offer him a doughnut.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 1:37 am and is filed under Children, Family, From the Church Front.
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