Week 10

Week 10 was an exciting one for Kylan…

First of all Kylan learned that he is his own worst enemy. Ky has been discovering his hands. And enjoys staring at them. Well, at one point he was staring at them and bringing them closer and closer to his eyes, when he jerked and poked himself in the eye. Of course that scared and hurt him—and I comforted him, but boy it was funny to watch.

If you don’t want to hear about the worst diaper changing adventure yet, skip to the next paragraph…so I was changing Ky and he was doing his usual thing of smiling and grinning as I discovered he had dropped a nice sized load in his diaper. So I covered up his water gun (the normal precaution) and went about cleaning his backside and placed a fresh diaper under him. At this point Kylan decided he wasn’t done pooping, and proceeded to go. Of course the fresh diaper wasn’t quite in position, so he ended up ruining his shorts as well as getting his legs full of poo. So in the process of trying to save his shorts and such from poo, I grabbed the rag off his water gun and attempted to stop it. Well, at the instant I uncovered his water gun, it began to fire. All over his face and shirt. So to sum it up, Kylan’s top half was covered in his urine and bottom half was covered in poo. The fun never ends!

On Friday Kylan and I took a trip to Chicago. My two good friends from Valpo Karen and Melissa were there with their babies. Melissa lives there and Karen is was visiting from Ohio. Melissa just had her baby Dylan. And Karen brought her son Dakota. It was a good time. I really enjoyed talking with others about the baby experience. In the pics above Dylan is 4 weeks and Dakota is almost a year old. My favorite pic is when we gave Steven (Melissa’s husband) all three kids. He did really well. On my visit I was most fascinated by the kids sizes. (You can see in the comparison picture.) Dylan is 8 pounds and 21 3/4”, Dakota is a little over 20 pounds, and Kylan is a whopping 14 lbs and 22 ½ inches. My conclusion—Kylan is a very chubby little boy…just look at the pic.

At 10 weeks and 6 days old Kylan has rolled over! YEAH! He was doing his tummy time….and was working the “whale”. The “whale” is what I Call the position when he is resting on his tummy with all four limbs in the air. His body then rocks a little back and forth on his round tummy. He looks like a weeble wobble. Anyway, he then set down his right leg and right hand and pushed, and over he went. He rolled right off the blanket onto the wood floor. You should have the look on his face. He had no idea what had just happened and didn’t know if it required crying, especially since mom was screaming ecstatically at him. I am so proud of my little boy. That round belly comes in pretty handy after all.

So to wrap up this week, we have yet to see any serious improvement with the meds he is on. He has however slept two nights with 5 hour intervals. So that has improved, but he has also been spitting up and “vomiting.” He never vomited before, and when he did spit up it wasn’t a whole lot. I think the meds may have made this worse. I have been told the meds don’t really take effect for the first 10 -14 days, so we still have several days left to see if it helps. I hope that he gets though this soon. I am told that by 6 months, he should be much better since his stomach should be able to do the work to keep things down.

Until next week…

Week 9

Well, our little Kylan is quite the little eater. He loves rice cereal. He also appears to be ogling our food from time to time.

Kylan went to the Wisconsin State Fair this week. He slept through the horses, cows, sheep, goats, and the pig races. However he did wake up in time to see the swine. And he posed for some pictures with the world's biggest piggy bank. He had a lot of fun!

On Tuesday, we went in for his 2 month appointment. The doctor told me that he would be getting 2 shots. Well it turns out that she meant 4 and an oral vaccine AND they had to redo his newborn blood draw--because they screwed up on it when he was born. Well first things first. Kylan now weighs.....13 lbs and 15 1/2 ounces. What a little chubber! He is in the 92 % for his weight. He is 22.5 inches in length--40%.

I brought a lot of questions in for the doc. But before I could ask them she made an observation. It appears he has a problem with reflux. His stomach is not well enough developed to keep the contents down. This makes his stomach upset and makes him spit up stuff. (Which has been occuring a lot more recently.)

It turns out that reflux is the answer to all my questions that I had for her. This is why he does not sleep more than 2 hours at night (when most are sleeping 5-6 by now). Kylan can't eat a full meal because it makes his stomach unhappy, so instead he eats smaller more frequent meals this is why he wakes up so often. Kylan also does not sleep well laying down. This is because the acid is more likely to be pushed up from his stomach when he is laying down as opposed to sitting up. He also is very stuffy by morning. This is because the acid and milk builds up in his nasal passages from laying down all night. He gets more fussy at night and sometimes during feedings--due to the acid. Sometimes he will also appear to scream out in pain--due to bubbles in his stomach from the acid.

So it was neat to have all my questions answered with one problem. Though not cool to have the problem. So the doc said that he should outgrow the problem by the time he is a year or so, but for now we have to give him meds three times a day. He normally likes anything we give him. But he hates these meds and tries to spit them out. It smells like mouthwash and leaves him with minty fresh breath.

I also want to say it was great getting Kylan back into cloth diapers after the trip from the week before. (He is pictured above in one of them.) I do not like disposables except for traveling. See Blog from July 21st for more info on the wonderful world of cloth diapers. Well that is all for this week.

MOre Week 8 pics

Week 8 --First overnight journey

This was a big week for Kylan.

First of all he had rice cereal for the first time ever. His first solid food. I was getting exhausted and finally resorted to it. There were several nights in a row where he was getting up every hour to eat. It was too much. I swear he had a bottomless stomach or something...

So I mixed a little with his milk and gave it to him in a bottle. Then each night I added a bit more. By Friday, I actually fed him using a spoon. He was a bit messy, but seemed to enjoy the change of pace.

They say you shouldn't feed baby solids until month 4, but I spoke to so many who started much earlier. In fact I had impressed severalo people by waiting as long as I did.

Week 8 was also a big week for Kylan because he went on his first road trip. We traveled to Indiana on Wednesday night (a 5 hour drive.) He did really well and slept pretty much the whole journey. We traveled at night, which I am sure helped. We took his pack and play and he slept in that. On Thursday, Kylan got to spend the day with Grandma Irvin and got to meet his uncles and his great godparents (is there such a thing?). By the end of the day, he was pretty overwhelmed and was crying a lot (take note of pics.) I think all the new things were too much for him to take in at once. You have to remember that with infants their 5 sense are pretty equivalent. So he was dealing with new smells, touches, and sounds, as well as sights.

On Friday, Kylan got to meet his great uncle Ricky and 2nd cousin Amy. Once again though, by the evening he was tired of people and pretty cranky. It took a lot of work to get him asleep.

On Saturday, grandma Irvin roasted Kylan. I mean--gave him a bath. He needed it. We then hit the road to Chicago to meet Great Grandpa & Grandma Herbst. On the way we got caught in really bad traffic. We were stuck for 1.5 hours. And this is not easy to do when you have a baby crying in the back. Luckily we were able to get to a rest stop and feed him. So we arrived in Arlington Heights and Kylan was sleeping like an angel. But that night Kylan decided he was going to get up every hour. By Sunday, Rob and I were exhausted and Kylan had had it.

He cried when Grandma and Grandpa Herbst held him. Then he cried when Great Aunt Linda held him. However, Aunt Linda decided she was going to get him to stop crying...and eventually it worked. He fell asleep in her arms. YEAH AUNT LINDA. It helped that she sung to him. Kylan will usually calm down if you sing to him.

That afternoon we left to go to the family reunion. Yeah--50 or so new people for Kylan to meet. We were really worried about the stress of this on Kylan and decided to pretty much keep him to ourselves. THat worked well. He didn't cry and slept a fair amount of time. Sorry fam...I hope you understand it was all for the good of Kylan.

So we all had a very busy and long weekend--and it was stressful for Kylan. In the future, I think we will limit the places we go and people we see for the good of the baby.

Week 7

Not a whole lot of excitement this week. I am learning how to juggle taking care of Kylan and the house at the same time. Kylan now becomes a part of each chore. Pictured above is him with his diapers fresh from the drier. He likes the journey from the drier in the laundry basket. I think he likes the warmth of the clothes.

Kylan smiles lots and lots. He also goes through mood swings. One minute he will be very happy the next he will be screaming. That is when we call him Mr. Grumpy Pants (or I should say that is what Rob calls him.) He usually will stop crying if you dance and sing with him. Dad sings him the worm song--which pretty much always works. I think it is his favorite. I am less original and will sing the ABC's or twinkle twinkle--or resort to the radio or CD's.

The biggest dilemma I currently have with Kylan is shopping. He hates it. He screams and everyone wants to ooh and ahh at him then. I don't get it. I have people in the grocery store following me to see him. They think he is so cute...I really don't think he is very cute when he is screaming and I can't hear myself think. They should come back when he is smiling. I think part of the problem with shopping is that he doesn't like his car seat. Most babies love the journey, but not Kylan (unless you are on a highway--then he is fine.)

I had to go to the dentis this week and left Kylan with Grandpa. I felt so bad. Kylan screamed the entire drive to his house and then fell asleep a block before we arrived. I dropped him off and apologized to Grandpa. I knew he was going to be a grump. Well, I got back to grandpa's late...and it turns out Kylan slept the entire time at Grandpa's. This is really odd. He will not sleep more than an hour for me at home, but he slept well over 2 hours at gramps. Hmmm...