Helmet Baby

We have a helmet baby!

Kail got his helmet today (4/21/2016).  We have known this was coming for a while now.  Unfortunately Kail has a rather large head (which as Kail is Jordan's clone is all Jordan's fault).  

To be honest sometimes when I look at certain photo's the "head" rant from "So I Married an Axe Murderer" starts running through my head.  (If you haven't seen the movie, you need to. Head Rant, come on people my kid has a flat head, we have already established I'm a bad mom).  Dont get me wrong our little man is the most adorable thing I've ever seen but he does have a big head (again this is Jordan's fault).

Due to the fact that he spent a good amount of time in the first few months laying on the back of his head (again, yes I'm a bad mom) in ether his swing or his crib he has developed what they call Brachycephaly.  In other words his head is very flat in the back and rather tall because it has been pushed up.  This next shot is from this morning as our "before" shot.



 

After a few days of adjustment he will end up wearing his helmet 23 hrs a day for about 3 months. The one hour of freedom is really just so we can clean him and it.  We know it sounds extreme, and yes many kids get flat spots but as you can tell from this photo, his is a bit noticeable.  After a lot of heartache and research we decided it was what is best for him.  Yes its a purely cosmetic issue.  The flat, tall head will not affect his brain growth, his brain will just grow to match his head shape without the helmet.  But I dare anyone to argue that cosmetics do not affect nearly every step of your life from friends, to dating, to job opportunities.  Having your skull misshaped can also affect things like your vision, as when your eyes are not inline or your ears are not inline, then glasses don't sit correctly.  It can also affect jaw placement, and for anyone who knows about my issues with my jaw, you should know I will do everything in my power to make sure Kail does not suffer from the same problem.  Not even my amazing insurance covers this little helmet so its been a rather expensive decision as well, but three months of wearing it, which he wont remember, is worth avoiding future complications.

As the helmet screams for attention anyway, we decided to make the best of it and make it cute. Lots of people decorate the helmets with stickers and glitter and whatnot.  But as I had some time to research it I found out that most car wrap companies will actually wrap these helmets for free.  Its smart really, you have these little cute very noticeable billboards walking/crawling/being carried around with your handy work for three months, while everyone asks who decorated it and you get to write it off your taxes as charity.  Jordan has already taken him in to get the design in motion so stay tuned for much cuter pictures, as Kail was not in the mood to alleviate mom's guilt, by giving her cute pictures.  He really just wanted to ether play with dads phone or sleep.

  

Great Uncle Kevin's Baby Goats

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My dad's brother Kevin lives up in Evenston WY on a farm.  He has tons of animals including cows, chickens, sheep, ducks and lots of goats.  He was nice enough to invite our family up to come play with all of his baby animals last weekend.  (Yes this is when I was carrying Hand Foot and Mouth).  So we made the drive and met my dad, and brothers family up there, where we spent the day having our clothes eaten and and shoes untied by what seemed to be a million baby goats.  Really it was probably around 30-40 but they were EVERYWHERE!  These pictures make it seem like the goats were on the other side of a fence but that's just because I was too busy trying to get them to stop eating my coat and untying my shoes to take pictures inside the pen.

Uncle Keven even had some brand new ones that were just born and were in a warming tub that the kids got to feed.

My Brother Dan and his wife Laurelin brought a great lunch.  It was a really pretty day even if the wind was a bit cold for Kail, and we all had a lot of fun.  And of course Jordan got to buy some more fireworks before we headed home.  Thank you uncle Kevin!

Hand Foot & Mouth Desease

For those of you without young children, no, Hand Foot & Mouth disease is not a livestock disease.  It is in fact much like chicken pox, an annoying itchy rash virus. There is no drug to make it go away, you just have to wait it out.  It is  mostly passed between children under the age of 5 and due to chickenpox now having a vaccine, is more common.  It turns out it runs pretty rampant in daycare's especially in the baby rooms where kids drool on everything as its passed through bodily fluid contact.  And yes not only can they get it more then once as there are different strains of the virus but adults, much to my horror can catch it too.  So the Sunday before last, Kail came down with a low grade fervor.  This has been happening off and on due to his teeth coming in, so Jordan and I didn't think much of it.  He also go fussier then normal, again we thought teething.  Monday he got his first diaper rash . .. OK normal for a baby starting solid foods.  Then Tuesday night we were bathing him and found what we thought were bug bites on his hands and a rash on his legs.  So at this point we are thinking bug bites or food allergy as I had just started mangoes.  Jordan even mentioned chicken pox which I of course laughed off . . . ya OK I should stop doing that. 

So the next day I go into daycare and again as I'm a first timer and they have seen everything I ask the director if she thinks its a food allergy.  And that  is when everything hit the fan.  "No that is not a food allergy, that is Hand Foot & Mouth, he has to leave right now and can't come back until they are scabbed over."  "well how long is that usually?" I ask starting to panic.  "Could be a couple of days to a couple of weeks, depends on the kid, the fervor this weekend, and butt rash were all things leading up to this, give him lots of Tylenol as he is going to be in a lot of pain" . . . . and out the door I go. 

Well so now what am I going to do, biggest problem is that this is VERY contagious as he has no teeth and slobbers on EVERYTHING.  And he cant be around other kids so my backups are out.  So for the next three days Jordan and I traded off staying home.  The funny thing was he was perfectly happy the entire time.



In fact he was so happy I actually took him to the Dr to make sure he had this "terribly painful virus".  the Dr confirmed it and also said it was very unusual for a kid to be so happy with it.  Kail likes his Dr a lot and will often give him a huge grin as soon as Adam walks in the door. 

Luckily Kail had a very minor outbreak with only a few blisters on each hand and foot and only two in the back of his throat which I think were the ones that hurt the most because he had to eat.  He was all scabbed up and back at daycare on Monday.

His mom on the other hand got it after she thought she was out of the incubation stage (huge and many apologizes to my family who I unintentionally was around probably while I was contagious. On the up side I don't slobber like Kail does) and ended up having what the InstaCare doctor said was a "sever allergic reaction" to the virus.  Something about having a hyper active immune system. I wasn't paying all that much attention, I just wanted the massive disfiguring  hives that covered me from head to foot to stop inching like a million bee stings. Needles to say Kail was much braver and handled it a lot better then his mom did.

Kails Rash:

Mom's Rash:

Walks & Bike rides

Ever since we got married Jordan and I have liked to go on walks together.  We usually use this time to talk about whatever is going on in our lives and what big decisions we have coming up.  One of the nice things about our neighborhood are the walking/biking trails that are practically right outside our door.  So when Kail was just a few days old we began bringing him on these walks.  We pushed him in the stroller at first, but as he has gotten bigger we have been trying to keep him off his head to avoid flat spots (which of course has not worked as you will see in an upcoming post), so Jordan often carries him.  Don't ask me how Jordan is able to carry this little 20+ lb guy that long but he does a great job.  Kail seems to like the walks, he usually starts out like this:

And then he ends up like this.

As our weather has gotten warmer we decided it was time for Kail to join us on our bike rides as well.  So this last weekend Kail went for his first ride. (Yes I know he needs a helmet, again upcoming posts will explain why he doesn't have one yet)  I know he doesn't look very happy, but he really just chilled through the whole thing.  We are very lucky our little guy puts up with pretty much whatever we decide to have him do.

4 Month Photos

Kail's Daycare had a professional photographer come in and take photo's of all the kids.  As we are planing on getting photo's of him done at 6 months we didn't plan on participating.  Little did we know you didn't have to sign your kid up, they just take the pictures and then see if you want to buy them.  And of course its your kid so of course you think they are adorable and therefore will buy them.  Very sneaky/smart of the Daycare.  We gave in and bought the cheapest package.  But weirdly lucky for us they messed up and gave us the wrong kids CD, so we had to wait an extra week for our photos and so they gave us ALL of the prints instead of just the ones we bought.  So here you go, photo dump.  We got several shots of each pose, but these were our favorites.  Photo 1 is our favorite and I never realized how much he likes sticking his tongue out, or how long it is until we saw photo 3.

Kail's First Easter

3-27-2016
I have to admit, I'm a slacker mom and didn't do an Easter basket for Kail this year, OK lets face it I didn't do Easter at all this year.  Which is why I'm so grateful for involved grandparents because Grandma Jackie and Grandpa Larry brought Kail an Easter basket full of adorable clothes and toys. Its hard to see in the shots I got but his shirt says "I am a Jedi, like my father before me."  And there is this baseball hat that is so freaking cute! More pictures of all that to come I'm sure.  And then Great grandma Hatch did an Easter hunt for us.  Yea! we love you all for making holidays special!

For Easter weekend we went down to Gunnison like we usually do, but this was a bit different as it was Kail's first night away from home.  We were hoping he would sleep in the car for most of the ride, but instead he decided to spend the ride down wide awake.  We really are lucky he is such a good baby, even though he was wide awake and its a long drive for him, he didn't fuss at all, just sat in his chair and played with his toys or stared out the window.

When we got there I began cleaning up some fruit for JaNae's baby shower and Jordan took care of Kail.  We quickly realized we had made a big mistake by leaving his jumper at home.  Kail is just too heavy to hold ALL the time, so while I worked Jordan decided to go to the store and find something we could put Kail in to keep him off his head.  I expected a jumper or a bumpo or something of that nature.  To my surprise, Jordan came back with a cooler. . . . yes you read that right a food cooler.  When he pulled up and I went out to go help, he showed me what he had bought.  I of course thought he was joking and opened the other car doors to see what else he had, but no he was serious.  And even more to my surprise it actually worked out well.

We then went over to Aunt Annette's house and had a nice baby shower for JaNae/Easter lunch.

After the shower Jordan took Kail out to meet the geese.  

We spent the rest of the day hanging out and visiting.  

The next morning we made our traditional "Grandpa's eggs" breakfast which includes Grandma's amazing waffles. After which Grandma put on an Easter hunt for us.  This year we did it in the house which was good because it was a bit cold outside.  Kail got to hang out with grandma Max while the rest of us tracked down all of Grandma's prizes.  Grandma always makes Easter in Gunnison so much fun, even for her fully adult grandchildren.

Kail was so excited by everything going on that he really didn't want to take any naps, but he finally crashed as we were getting ready to go home, and slept almost the entire drive home.