5,6, & 7 Months

So life is busy around here and I'm a little behind posting but we are doing great! Moving along just as normal as can be, except for eating baby food that is.  We have to eat our baby food from a bottle with a huge hole cut in the nipple because when we feed from a spoon it comes STRAIGHT out of his nose.  Bless his bones he gets really frustrated with it and starts sneezing and making these awful faces.  :( In the last few months he has started to roll back and forth from back to front and over again, at 6 months he started sitting up and now at 7 months he is trying to crawl !! He is a happy guy, unless he is sleepy or hungry and LOVES his big sisters. 

Our palate surgery will be in 3 months, on June 27th, and I can't wait.  We have struggled with ear infections, even after tubes, we've had 2, all related to the palate being open and when his palate is repaired he will be able to eat without anything coming out of his nose !!!

5 Months......

6 Months......

7 months.....

Heres a picture of his palate, its the only photo I have ever been able to take of it. 

You can see the problem it could cause since it opens up directly into his nose.  It deals us fits but this is what we do with baby food and as you can see by chunky monkey's legs he is not letting this palate stop him from eating. :)

The top picture is of a litle device Nonnie found, it has tiny holes cut in it so that he can hold it and we fill it full of baby food.  He sucks on it to his little hearts content.  This is great if we are going out to eat and need something to keep his little hands busy.  The second picture of the nipple is without a valve, its our pigeon nipple and bottle, so that its easy to squeeze if you need to just with a giant hole in the nipple.  We have absolutely worn out these nipples since these are the only ones he is able to use and as they get worn out the hole gets bigger.  We just start using them for baby food.  We currently have about 6 nipples we rotate in and out and wash and wash and WASH!!! Hopefully though we will be off the bottle soon and onto a sippy cup so we arent buying anymore pigeon bottles.  This seems to work for us really well so far with baby food though. 

He is FINALLY able to hold a paci in his mouth, after MANY months of having to hold it in while he sucked and sucked and sucked we are finger free !!! This is LIFE CHANGING if you have ever had a baby that had a cleft lip or palate you know just how life changing.  These are the kinds of things I have always taken for granted with my other babies.  Alex has taught me so much.  Being thankful is just one of the many things he has taught me, even in the small things.  So all of you cleft mommy and daddys out there, there is HOPE !!! We tried EVERY paci known to man and it wasn't the paci it was just that baby boy couldn't hold a suction in his mouth because of that old cleft.  Things are getting more normal around here every day.

And heres a few pictures one before and a few after just to show off  Dr. Grant's handy work and just how good GOD is, most people don't even realize anything was wrong anymore.