Mason has always been a hard worker. If a task he’s assigned to do is fun, he’s all over it and stays on that task and hits his mark, completing whatever he was asked to do.

I’ve commented a few times that Mason’s running drew comparisons to the morphing of a 3 legged dog, a bobblehead doll and a marionette.

Picture that and you’ve got a good idea of what it looked like. His arms flailed, his head bobbled back and forth, all while his torso, arms and legs seemed to be going in different directions at the same time.

He was a balanced imbalance in motion.

For nearly the past 4 years he’s logged countless hours of physical therapy while we, and our insurance company, have spent thousands of dollars to help in learn basic gross motor skills.

Noticeably over the past few months his running has shown marked improvement and we recently had a great payoff..

While we were in Austin a little over a week ago, Mason spied a group of kids nearby kicking around a soccer ball.

HE TOOK OFF!

Sprinting across the grass he joined them, more so running with the herd of kids, than actually kicking the ball. But we were happy because he initiated the social play, and didn’t fall over a single time while running to the group or while chasing the ball. If you didn't know Mason and about his issues, you would've assumed he was just another typical kid chasing a ball.

He repeated the same process later that evening when a Frisbee complete with red, green, and blue blinking lights was being thrown in the dusk by a father and son. He chased the Frisbee between the two of them and on a couple of occasions they were kind enough to throw it to him and tolerate his meager attempts to throw it back.

Ellen, his physical therapist at Our Children’s House Baylor has worked tremendously hard with Mason and I can tell she loves him like one of her own. Her determination and hard work, combined with Mason’s have resulted in a great payoff.

So much so that she told us in our last session that Mason has had such great progress over the past months that he’s right at the cusp of being on target for his age group. While she’s happy that he’s achieved success, I’m sure she’s partly sad that he’ll soon be “graduating” from PT and will be on his own.

He’ll continue to work hard, since we’ll continue to push him. Since he’s taken an interest in soccer we’ll soon be enrolling him in a league with typical peers and hopefully, work on that social play he’s so far behind in.

But for now, we’re happy about what he’s achieved and look forward to more progress.