Week 12

Well, my baby boy just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I swear the shorts in the above pics fit him fine in the morning, and then by dinnertime his pudge was sticking out. But don't worry we found a way to let the pudge be free. There goes another pair of shorts.

So Kylan has switched meds for his reflux. He started a downward trend and began waking up every 2 hours again on Zantac. So now the doc has him on something that starts with the letter "O". Thank goodness for health insurance, because the stuff runs $150 per bottle, and the bottle will last only a month. He seems to be doing better though again.

On Labor day, we took our nephews Jordan and Devan to a Brewer's game--Kylan's second game. The nephews had a good time. Jordan shared his baseball glove with Kylan --which was very cute. It will be neat to see how their relationship develops in the future as cousins. Kylan was good at the game again and really appeared to enjoy it...except for eating time. When Kylan was eating, if the crowd cheered, Kylan would begin crying. It was really funny. He needed it to be quiet so he could concentrate on eating. So we took pics of the boys in front of the field and the foul post.

Just to address the other pics above...yes we were really sleeping when we were awakened to a flash. And no we do not let our child watch tv. That is posed--but boy is it funny. I'm not sure about the crying one. Kylan started, so I thought I would join him.

WEll that's all for this week...Not much more to add.

Week 11

Okay—lots of pics, I know…But he was just so cute! Week 11 was a very important one for Kylan. On Sunday August 27th, he was baptized. But before we talk about that day we should go back and talk about the days prior.

On Friday we hadn’t noticed much improvement with Kylan’s meds. The doc had us go and have his insides examined just to make sure everything was fine. They had him drink Barium and through an x-ray machine we got to watch it go down. It was pretty cool to see the liquid go down his esophagus to his tummy and intestines. Everything turned out good though. The only thing the doc noticed was that he tends to get milk up his nose.

The doc has since given us a new rx that we will start him on soon. But he actually has been spitting up less which is good.

Kylan’s godparents arrived on Saturday and got to meet him for the first time. I think they learned a lot about small babies, though we were unable to coax them into changing any diapers. Perhaps, next time.

Kylan appears to be very fascinated with Uncle Adam. In fact, there were several times Uncle Adam got Kylan to quiet down. Aunt Liz got to see how wobbly babies are. (And why we sometimes compare Kylan to a Weeble Wobble.) This was amusing. By the time she left, she had several sturdy baby holds down. I think she is about ready to handle some of her own.

On Sunday we all squished in the car for the long drive to Madison. Rob and I do not have a home church in Milwaukee (we attend a couple of different churches). We liked the idea of having the pastor that married us, baptize Kylan.

We got there early enough to get Kylan dressed (didn’t want to do that earlier in case he spit up or poo’ed) and topped off (fed) before the service. We talked to Pastor Jeff before the service and were bummed to find out that he was going to do the baptism at the end. Why were we bummed –you ask…well Kylan loves worship and singing. Not a problem. But when it comes to the sermon, Kylan gets bored. He wants you to stand up and hold him. And if you don’t, he screams. So sure enough, worship—not a problem. Then the sermon came and he started getting fussy –grandpa was holding him. We passed him a nuk. That helped, for a short amount of time. Then he was passed to me. Well he was doing okay until the pastor decided to use Kylan as a part of his sermon.

The pastor was talking about the big picture versus the small picture and how God needs us to not be intimidated by what lies ahead, because God knows how everything will work out. Well then the pastor said that Kylan does not realize that God was going to use him to reach 300,000 people in his life. And if he did he would be very scared. At this point Kylan began to scream. So it was somewhat humorous.

Anyways the baptism went well. Kylan did not even cry when water was poured on his head. He just gave a baffled type of look.
Afterwards we went out for brunch and celebrated. Kylan being the great guy he is, picked up the check and we drove home. Not too much humor or adventure for Kylan this week, but by Monday he had discovered his thumb, and now appears to be an avid thumb sucker when he can find it. We’re so proud. Well that’s all for this week…My baby boy is almost three months old… I can’t believe it. He is such a big boy…To quote Pastor Jeff “He’s a tank!”

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.