September 24th

We had so many amazing accomplishments today! This morning Elijah could not quite totally hold his head up on his own, or sit on his own, or pull himself up, or stand. And by the end of the day he was doing all of those! He's sitting up in his crib right now playing with a puzzle, acting like nothing ever happened. It is absolutely amazing. He's not up and walking yet, and he can't stand without holding on to something, but with how quickly he has been progressing I don't think it will take long!

He's also eating normal meals now. Maybe not the huge amounts he did before (I'm guessing his stomach shrunk up a little bit since we've been here), but he's probably eating the regular one-year-old kid portions now :-P

The greatest news of all is that since Elijah was being so wild and crazy all day he was constantly setting off his monitors, so they took them off! They will put them back on at night, but they said there's no reason for him to have them on when he is awake and playful. Also, they took out his feeding tube since he's eating now! AND they unhooked his IV fluids from his PICC line! So the line is still in, but it's just taped down and he's not connected to anything. So now he can move around freely, which is GREAT because he was getting himself all tangled up :-P

So since he got completely unhooked this evening, we were able to take him outside of the room a little! We brought him down the hall to look at the fish tank, and into the playroom for a little while. We also brought him back upstairs to visit the doctors and nurses up in the PICU and they were all thrilled to see him. They were all talking about how unbelievable it is to see him looking well. One nurse even referred to him as the "miracle baby". It's clear to us that with the way the doctors and nurses talk about him, they didn't expect him to make it. So he truly is a "miracle baby," God most definitely worked a miracle in his life.

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord for what he's done in our baby's life!