One year ago

Sorry it has been so long. We've been super busy with weddings, baby showers, wedding showers, and outside fun. Gabe has been doing well. He was Baptized last Sunday. He was actually Baptized in August in the hospital, but last week was the official stuff. We've been doing lots of therapy. Gabe's pecs are incredibly weak, so we are really working on him moving objects to midline and activating his upper body. You really need your pecs to get into any type of crawling position. Poor Gabe just hates being on his belly and using those chest muscles. Hopefully he'll realize that using these muscles will help him. We have also gone to the Down Syndrome clinic at Cincinnati Children's Hosp. to get some extra therapy from the speech therapist on feeding. Gabe did great with a vibrating spoon. Who new that spoon would make such a difference. He still doesn't like the cup, but he's averaging a good 4-5 Tbsp a day with the spoon now. One step closer....

One year ago today, I found out I was going to have a child with Down Syndrome. After all the tears and struggles, look at the cute little guy I've been blessed with. He makes me smile everyday.

Busy Weekend

Swim class

Playing outside

Happy Easter!

The many emotions of Gabe

Some say that people with Down Syndrome are "happy all the time". Gabe is a happy baby, but he shows me a wide range of emotions everyday just like any child would. Here are some faces from Tuesday.

sitting like a big boy

Gabe has been working on sitting up lately. He's been really doing well. He no longer likes tummy time and immediately roles over onto his back...little stinker. Feeds are going a little better. I have an appointment scheduled with GI to see if we can do anything else for the reflux besides Prevacid. We'll also be seeing the Speech Pathologist in the Down Syndrome clinic more frequently for the feeding stuff. We saw ENT last week and they will be sedating Gabe in May to look deeper into his ears. They'll put in tubes at that time if they see fluid which they are expecting.

Justin turned 30 on Monday. Gabe got him some UK gear..go cats!

How can you not love that smile!

Cute pictures of the week

This week, Gabe went to swim class. He was happy to be in the water because he's soooo big

I know this looks upside down, but I was at Gabe's head when I snapped the shot. This is him benchpressing a wooden spoon. Good PT work Gabe!

Gabe was being very giggly and cute after bathtime I couldn't resist. I think he just liked being naked.

He also blows rasberries now. Gotta be careful or you'll get a spray of babyfood your way.

I haven't posted in a long time. Our computer crashed, so I'm typing this from a really old and slow laptop. Gabe has had a low grade fever on and off for the past day. He's fine with some Tylenol and there are no other symptoms. He had his repeat flu and H1N1 shots this past week and I think he's just having a little reaction to them. He hasn't wanted to eat much today, but I'm giving the little guy a break since he's not feeling well...good thing we have the Gtube as a safety net...now I sound like our OT.

7mo, 3 wks, Gabe's first word.

On Friday, Gabe said "dada". He's babbling like crazy now. And, just tonight, he signed "up" when Justin went to pick him up. We did it 3 times and he kept lifting his arms up. It's very cute...now if we could just get this feeding thing down.

Seven and half months...Gabe rolls over.

That's right! On friday Gabe rolled over back to belly by himself. Now, he's doing it all the time. He still gets his arm stuck at times, but when he manages to lift his head up, he looks so proud. We started PT on Friday with Mr.Dan. He taught us how to work on Gabe's core muscles. Gabe now bench presses a spoon to build up his pecs...it's hilarious.