Onward and upward

When my brother and I were young, someone bought him the Mouth Sounds book for Christmas. It teaches you how to make all sorts of interesting sound effects using only your mouth, throat and hands. I think Gabriel may have been reading this book on the sly. He is daily giving us a range of rasberries, singing, babababa, dadada, singing/lip buzzing combos and I even heard a mamama yesterday. These aren't words, as in he doesn't use the same sound when addressing a particular thing or doing a particular activity, but he is experimenting with all the fun ways he can get Mom and Dad's attention.

Unfortunately, one of those ways is figuring out how to make the "retching" sound whenever he wants attention. Given his penchant for reflux, we ALWAYS pay attention to that sound, and he knows it. If you just ignore him, it can quickly turn into a real retch just from him making the sound over and over. Babies sure know how to punch a hole in your behavior modification protocols. Lucky for him, he's cute and smiley and we love him.

Gabriel is also working very hard on getting around. He sees toys or things he wants just out of reach and goes for it. However, he has only consistently succeeded in making backward progress. He can get up on all fours and rock, and usually lifts one arm way up and then the other, but coordinating the knees is still just a little bit beyond him. He did make a little forward progress the other day -- about a half-inch and it was probably the result of righting himself after tipping over sideways, but I will count it.

He can sit very well now. We've taken him both to the grocery store where he had to sit in the cart for awhile and to restaurants where he tried out the high chairs and he did very well. The best way to keep him busy at the restaurant is to give him a napkin or paper towel. Waving it around and shredding it can occupy him for quite awhile. He still hasn't quite managed to push himself into a sitting position, but we left him alone in the playpen for a few minutes yesterday and when we checked in on him, he was sitting, so he may have figured it out. We'll see if the trick repeats itself.

Our recent visit to the GI doctor really showed us how much progress he is making. He is not taking food in the mouth yet other than tastes, but we must be doing something right with the tube feeding because he is now 20 lbs., 9 oz. He's growing so well, the GI doctor said we could take him off the 24 calorie protocol and just make the formula normally (20 calorie). We are also completely dropping one formula feed during the day and condensing his night feeds down to 4 hours instead of 8 by increasing the rate. One of the key ways to get a kid to start eating is to set up the nighttime fast/morning hunger cycle by getting them off the night drip feeds. Plus, your body isn't designed to digest all night long, so eliminating the night feed is always a good goal. I'm actually still feeding the higher calorie formula at night, just because we dropped a feed, and we'll see how he grows. His next GI visit will be at his one year adjusted age mark, and the dietician said
we may get the go-ahead to drop formula completely and just give a mineral supplement!

I have started blending a set recipe for him that is (hopefully) nutritionally balanced and counting the calories that go into it. He gets oatmeal, yogurt, and fruit in the morning and oatmeal, meat, veggies, and yogurt in the evening. I also started adding some spices to it that are supposed to aid in gastric motility, anti-nausea and help with constipation. In the morning, he gets cardamom and cinnamon, and in the evening he gets basil and pepper. I don't really know if it helps a lot, but it sure smells good -- especially the cardamom!

When I saw our new goddaughter this weekend (she was two weeks old) it really underscored how big he's gotten and how far he has come.