Brief update

Since we last wrote Ilan has been in a consolidation mode.  He is improving on all the gains in movement and control he has made the past 4 months.  He continues to improve on his right side abilities and also a bit on his speech control - just today we had a sing along where we sang the abcd and the aleph-beth:  the game was that I said one letter and he had to respond with a sound to say the next letter, this was to a tune of course!!!  Ilan responded promptly over 90% of the time.   

Ilan went for a sleep test 2 weeks ago and he passed.  

Also, we finally bought Ilan a Wii and have been practicing same with him.  It is quite difficult for him as he is not yet able to snap his wrist and cause the machine to react.  We help him along and give him to try by himself - the good news is he does not give up and continues to try by himself. 

This week his 5th grade teacher from Sinai came to visit - at the time Ilan had a huge crush on her.

Ilan was very happy to see her.

Ilan's daily task is to try something new and he enjoys 'creating' new goals.  He thrives on challenge and we are confident that before long he will master playing Wii games!!

Ilan's 1st Seder and 1st Steps

Happy Passover to all.

Our 1st seder at home with Ilan was a wonderful experience.  Dad did his normal "Cochini" (South Indian) rendition of tunes and melodies for several of the prayers and everyone did their fair share of reading of the Hagadah.  Ilan closely followed the Hebrew writing in the book and had a proud look on his face during the reading as he was happy to be with the family and also that he could still read and understand the Hebrew!   

Ilan carried the Hagadah a step further today- just as the Hagadah tells the story that the Jews took their 1st steps out of Egypt, Ilan literally took his 1st steps in a very long time.  With the help of a walker and some help from his physical therapist, Ilan managed to walk across a room (approx.  10-12ft) for the 1st time!!  It sounds really small but this is (larger than) a huge accomplishment for Ilan.  Dad was with him when this happened and was blown out of the water by Ilan's tenacity.  His therapist told Ilan that it is the best birthday present that she ever received!!

Thank you for the comments posted - we will read them to Ilan before the 2nd seder tonight!!

Ilan's Tsa-adah (Hike)

Fan-tas-tic and a-maz-ing are the two words that come to mind to describe Ilan's active dedication to improving himself during the past 10 days.

Besides card playing, backgammon, ping pong and other board games Ilan has kept busy building up his stamina.  It is ironically a deja-vu subject on stamina because just prior to the accident Ilan spoke to me very seriously about improving his stamina so that he could play better in the waterpolo team.  At therapy he is being made to stand mostly alone with the aid of a walker to keep his balance and strengthen his legs.  He is also having to move his head in all directions to strengthen his neck muscles (most of the time he sits holding his head straight up!).

Last weekend Ilan, Mum and Dad took Nahla (our dog) and went for a long walk near Venice Beach.  Ilan absolutely loved the outdoors as the weather that day was great. 

Over the past few days Ilan has played a kind of handball.  We take a beach ball and throw it to him and he has to punch the ball with his left hand - he does fairly well.  He also plays soccer: we throw the ball near his leg and he has to kick it - his coordination is phenominal when he kicks the ball with his left leg (probably because he is/was a natural leftie in soccer?!) 

HAPPY PESACH from all of us in the Ashkenazi family  

To all Ilan's friends that read this blog:  PLEASE take a few seconds to write Ilan a sentence or two in the comments section - we promise to read it with/to him.  Ilan should be getting a userfriendly computer soon for his own use; once he gets up-to-speed we will have him communicate directly online?!