something new each day

I wake-up each morning and I almost expect to have teenagers in the house.  That is how fast the boys continue to grow right before our eyes.  It is hard to believe that it was two years ago that we started this journey.  And now I have 7.5 month old boys sleeping in the bedroom down the hall.  I keep searching for the pause button on the remote control but I've been told by many other parents that the pause button is broken on every remote control in the world!  So I should probably just stop looking for it.

We officially have little boys that can sit without any assistance.  Huh?  Of course they still fall on occasion so we typically put a boppy pillow behind them for protection.  But stick a toy in front of either boy and they will sit for minutes on end.  It makes life a bit tricky at the moment because both Jakob and Alex prefer to be sitting instead of laying down.  But because we still can have accidents Kara and I often find ourselves juggling two sitting little boys.  They are also rolling all over the place.  Jakob rolls much more often than Alex.  It just goes with their distinct personalities.  Alex will sometimes forget that he can roll over and so he whimpers when he ends up on his belly.  Jakob on the other hand will spot an object all the way across the room and roll over and over again until he can get to it.  Did I mention Jakob's recent obsession with the remote control?

Alex "Look Momma!  No hands!"

And drum roll ... Alex is getting his first tooth!  A week ago Alex woke-up in the middle of the night extremely fussy and with a low-grade fever.  He was exhausted but you could tell that he was uncomfortable.  We gave him some Tylenol and he was just fine come morning time.  Then on January 1st we saw the tooth coming in.  I think Alex is just proud of himself for getting a tooth before Jakob!

The boys are becoming quite the pigs.  We are transitioning to three solid meals a day.  We have also moved them to level 2 foods.  They have now eaten sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, peas, green beans, peaches, bananas, prunes, apples, pears, mango, and brown rice.  And now we are combining foods together.  Alex absolutely loves bananas and peaches together.  He literally keeps his mouth open the entire time and grunts to make certain you know that he wants more food.  Alex still gets upset when he has to eat vegetables.  And Mr. Jakob will eat absolutely anything at anytime.  This makes me nervous that he will soon be trying to eat the power cords or the remote control that I mentioned a bit earlier.  They boys are also still eating Puffs and Baby Mum-Mum's.  Jakob is really getting good at picking up the puffs and putting them in his mouth.

Jakob has recently become obsessed with hats.  Much like his Uncle Bryan!  There was a evening last week when Jakob was super fussy and Kara was messing around with him and stuck Jakob's winter hat on his head.  Jakob was instantly happy.  He got even happier when we gave him the remote control!  Then the other afternoon we were going through some clothes that some friends had given to us and there was a bucket hat in the mix of clothes.  Jakob wore the hat all afternoon!  We called it his "thinking cap" ...

Jakob

Now onto the not so good ... We have been battling a stubborn diaper rash with both of the boys!  Jakob seems to have gotten the brunt of it.  Jakob actually started to get the rash around Thanksgiving.  But it was minimal and did not bother him in the least bit.  Well the diaper rash started to get worse and worse and eventually Alex had the same rash (though not as bad).  Per the recommendation of my sister-in-law (a pediatrician) we started to use hydrocortisone on the rash but after a week it didn't appear to be having any impact.  Plus Jakob was starting to scratch at the rash whenever we changed his diaper.  Based upon our reading Kara and I thought it was a yeast rash.  So we took the boys out of cloth diapers and began to use both the hydrocortisone and lotrimin on the rash.  It only took a few days for the rash to disappear on Alex.  So we put him back in cloth diapers.  We also followed the instructions for getting yeast out of cloth diapers.  Alex has been rash free for about a week.  But it suddenly started to reappear last night.  Insert curse words ... Jakob on the other hand if finally rash free.  So we have since put Alex back in disposable diapers and began to use the hydrocortisone and lotrimin again.  We also decided to put Jakob back in cloth diapers to see if the rash appears again on him.  And to make this mystery even more interesting I showed the rash to my sister-in-law on Christmas Eve (always nice to have a pediatrician in the family) and she actually thought it could be eczema and not a yeast diaper rash.  So who knows?  Did the hydrocortisone help?  Or did the lotrimin help?  Or was it both?  It is so frustrating.  So for the moment I guess you can say Kara and I am experimenting to see if we can figure out what is causing the rash.  It could just be because the boys are eating more and more solid foods.  And we have little boys that poop ALL THE TIME!!!  I'm talking an abnormal day is 2 poops.  A normal day is 3 - 4 poops.  So it could just be skin irritation.

 Mary