Moo, Baa, La La....Cookie!

The year is wrapping up, and I realize that a lot has happened in the past six months. In late summer, we moved back to Maple Valley to live with Gabriel's grandparents, and developed new daily routines as I became the full time employee and Thomas became the stay at home dad. We also had to switch therapists since we moved outside the service area of our therapy center. That was really hard; his ladies have seen him go from a 6 mo./2 mo. baby to walking, eating, signing and babbling. Now we have to somehow trust new people that haven't seen him grow, learn and change to be able to carry on where his previous therapists left off.

In terms of language development, we've seen a huge shift. Gabriel went from babbling and using only the "more" sign to using "please", "all done", "sit", "open" and "help" with the correct intent. "All done" was a big one. We finally had a cue where he could tell us he was full at mealtimes, instead of just waiting and watching for the barfy-face. And then, one day, I was reading an animal sounds book to him and I paused at "a horse says...." and he filled in "NEIGH!" very enthusiastically. It surprised us all, but he had memorized the book and actually would associate the correct sound with the correct animal, even if read out of order. Here's a video of him reading the book, "Moo, Baa, La La La", with me



We've moved on to play with his stuffed barnyard animals. He still mostly throws them around, but sometimes you can catch him doing things like this:



Now, he's using more words than signs, and he loves to identify colors for you. Here's one more, just to show you how far he's come. He's play talking on the phone and then reading himself a book:



Even as language is developing, feeding still remains a challenge. We've hit a texture plateau, meaning he eats solids, but only in puree form. We've tried introducing third stage foods, and he can deal with a few bites, but he can't have a whole meal with that much texture. He has his "safe" textures that he knows he can handle, but anything outside the box is really hard to deal with. This applies to liquids as well. We are still working on cup drinking, and the thing that works the best right now is a Honey Bear drinker. Through the straw, it allows us to get a small portion of milk/yogurt mix into his mouth while we encourage him to close his mouth around the straw. He doesn't have to suck, just squeeze to make it work. We use a milk/yogurt mix so that the liquid isn't as runny and he can handle it a little better (plus yogurt is a favorite food and he will ask for it by name). With this, we can get him to self-drink about an ounce or two per day, so the tube is still our primary fluid conduit.

On the other end of the spectrum, chewing also seems to be a foreign concept. I finally got him to reliably lick foods if I tell him to touch it to his tongue, but if he actually bites down and gets a small piece of something in his mouth, he can't handle it and gags until the piece of food comes out. He hasn't figured out how to manipulate foods in his mouth, and by extension he hasn't figured out how to spit things out, so the only way he can get unwanted things out of his mouth is to gag and vomit. We have a long way to go. Thomas has started showing Gabriel some Cookie Monster videos, hoping to have him learn by observation. So far, we have only succeeded in addicting our child to Cookie Monster and he will ask for "cookie" several times a day (he only gets to watch it once, though).



One other complication we discovered is that Gabriel has a partial vocal cord paralysis on the right side. We finally made an ENT appointment and they stuck a scope down is throat through his nose (he was NOT amused). What this means is that liquids can sneak past the vocal cord barrier and that may make it harder for him to learn to drink. There are several treatment options available; right now we're just taking the "wait and see if therapy can help him compensate" approach, but we may have to take surgical steps to either "plump up" the paralyzed vocal cord or move it over surgically so that the gap can be closed by the functioning vocal cord. If you want more detail, have a look at this webpage, it gives a really good overview of what the ENT told us.

Physically, Gabriel is doing very well. He's progressed to jumping, stair-climbing and generally climbing all over Mommy and Daddy. His favorite game is to stand on your lap and then just fold his legs and drop, eliciting an OOF! from the parent in question. This is apparently hilarious. Now that we have a child who loves to run, we also take him hiking. Here's a few pictures of our outings.

On the boardwalk, he's pretending the leaf stem is a straw and putting it in the indentation just under his lower lip (this is how he thinks straws work).

At Christmas, his Grandma got him a "beep beep". We had requested it since he needs to learn to use his feet to push himself forward and backward. That night, at bedtime, instead of crying for Daddy, he was crying for the "beep beep". I think it is a winner.

It's 11:45pm on New Year's Eve. This year is almost over, and the fireworks are starting to pick up outside. Luckily, Gabriel is already in bed asleep. We have a lot to work on in the next year. Thomas is working on publishing a book about preemies and NICUs, using our story as a uniting thread. We are watching our preemie grow up, and are thankful for the chance to do so. I think I need to update his blog banner, he's such a big boy now!