So, when last I wrote Owen was trying out some new seizure meds.  Things have been going pretty well with them - no seizures and he has adjusted well to them, but a few days ago Owen started being really irritable and biting people again - it was reminiscent of the Keppra days.  Yesterday he had his seizure follow-up visit with his neurologist and we discussed the new behavior.  At that time we had been taking Owen's daytime dose of Trileptal and Zonegran and splitting them in half - giving a quarter dose in the morning, a quarter dose at lunchtime and then the last half at bedtime. The label says give him 1/2 of each in the morning and 1/2 at bedtime, but he just couldn't function during the daytime that way. Owen's behavior was definitely the worst in the morning, getting better throughout the day.  So, Dr. Wilson suggested eliminating the quarter dose of Trileptal first thing in the morning as it makes Owen tired and it might be making him cranky to get something that makes him tired right after waking up.  We tried it today and it was the best day we've had in ages.  I don't know if it was just a coincidence, but I'll take days like this anytime for any reason:

Owen has been making incredible progress in his physical abilities in the last few weeks - and in his intellectual ones too.  I've put together a video of some of his latest accomplishments.  Owen has never really gotten the hang of tool usage -  he just eats all objects that he is given and never attempts to use them for any specific purpose.  One of the places that we have started in OT with this concept is to get him to bang a drum with a stick.  We have been working on this forever.  It's a bit hard to see in the little video that I can upload to the web, but in the first bit he is happily banging on a little drum with a stick. 

From the drum we move onto his new ability to CRUISE!!!  He can take steps sideways while holding onto things.  He starts out holding onto the gates where his toys are tied up and makes his way to more toys on the couch - all under his own power.  This is just so cool (Yes, Mommy is bouncing)!    After that is just a bit of him practicing standing up from a kneel - this one is for Ms. Nacol his PT, just to prove that he really did it :-)   Next, he shows how he can crawl from the floor up to toys on the couch using his stairs. It's not graceful, but it is effective.  Finally, you can see him working on his walking - he's taking steps with just holding onto one of Tessa's hands. 

Enough verbage...here's the small version video for low bandwidth (less than cable modem):