A week later, he took his first airplane ride to visit his great-grandparents. He did quite well, and even was able to have his carseat on the plane to relax in. Grandma and Grandpa's house had quite a bit of clear floor, so he was able to practice crawling a lot.
Here we all are at the Peoria Zoo, grandparents plus cousin Lindy and her daughter Eliana. As you can see, Gabriel is becoming quite the traveler. However, he still wants to get there under his own power. He motors around church and our house all the time. He is even pulling to standing using his rocker chair. It won't be long before he's hiking on his own!
We have a few other notable moments to share. Gabriel did catch a minor respiratory something on the plane, but came through it with just Vaporub on the feet. It did mean he was still having reflux episodes every day, but once he got over the cold.....we had WEEK with NO REFLUX. Oh my! We even raised his feed rate from 235 mL/hr to 400 mL/hr and he did great. I think real food all the time is making a big difference! Then we got ambitious and raised his actual food amount and Mr. McBarfyPants has made a reappearance. We're dropping the volumes back down and hoping for our non-barfy baby back, because when he chooses to barf all over the grocery cart full of groceries, Daddy's shoes and Mommy's purse....well, let's just say he's lucky he's cute. Because I think that may be all that saved him.
Gabriel's SLP has documented his first word: "hi". If you wave and say "hi" at him, he does a good approximation of the word back at you. It is intentional. He is also using "buh-buh" as his intentional word of choice. It started when we played with blowing bubbles at him and saying the word (bu-bbles), and he started saying it when we picked up the bubble bottle. We now get buh-buh for a lot of things. He can make the mama and dada sounds, but he doesn't pin them to us yet. We will hear him babbling to his toys in his playpen, though. I wonder what he's saying?
On September 24, Gabriel celebrated his one year anniversary of his graduation from the NICU. We decided that was a special day and deserved cake. :)
If you want to see the latest Gabriel photos, go visit his photo gallery and eventually, I will get things up on Facebook, too.
