It's all coming to an end....

We went and visited with the lady that will be watching on Kayden on Monday's and Wednesday's when I go back to work. We are so fortunate to have a Christian lady with a little girl a couple months younger than Kayden that has agreed to watch him those 2 days. She is wonderful and such a sweetheart and I know he will do great there. However, this visit just solidified the fact that, in 16 short days I will no longer be a stay at home mom and will switch my role as primary care taker of kayden, to "secondary". I know I will always be the primary care taker per say.. but he is now going to be with people who will see him for a longer wake time than I will. I know people do it every day and their kids turn out just fine. It's just getting harder and harder on me to believe that I will no longer be home with him all the time and I will have to depend on someone else to feed, change, comfort, and play with my baby. I know everyone who will be watching him will do all of these things just as well, if not better, than what I can do.. but he's my baby and I'm having a really hard time letting go of that. I just keep telling myself that people go back to work after only 6 weeks of staying home with their baby and they are just fine. I KNOW he will be just fine, I'm just not quite ready for all of this to come to an end. Thankfully, this lady will watch him Monday and wednesdays, Nick will be home with him on Tuesdays or Thursdays (he will stay home one of those days, and we aren't sure where Kayden will go the other day) and my mom will keep him on Fridays. He WILL be ok. I WILL be ok. That's the mantra i'm just going to have to keep telling myself. I just don't know if telling myself that will work come August 11th.

Big boy carseat!

We got Kayden's big boy car seat in today! We ended up going with the Britax Marathon 70 because it has the highest safety ratings, goes up to 40lbs rear facing, and 70 forward facing. It isn't too big so that we can easily get it in and out of our cars and it's super comfy. We got it at a GREAT price too! The most I have seen it priced at was 289 and the least was on amazon for 219... but we got it for 179! I feel like that's a pretty good deal and I am thankful that I asked "Baby Cheapskate" on facebook for the best price. Then, when we went through the whole ordering process, order the black "onyx" colored seat. 30 minutes later we get an email saying there was a merchandise problem and they no longer have the black one, only the red and "cow" colored ones. I definitely was not a fan of the cow, and the red was alright... but I was really bummed about not being able to get the black one. I'm not normally THAT person, but we sent back an email asking if they would go down on the price anymore since it was a problem on their end and I was really only looking for the black one. They went down $10 more dollars (hey... 10 dollars is 10 dollars!) and so we ended up going with the red one. It's really not that bad now that we have it.. and I actually like it! For right now, this one will go in Nick's car since we take it more and I will keep the carrier in my car (booo!! but my mom actually buys the babies "big kid" car seat for their first birthdays and we can't afford to buy that expensive of a car seat until I get my first pay check for teaching... and Kayden isn't that close to reaching his limits on the carrier yet) However, we will be leaving that one with the sitter so really we will just be switching the car seat back and forth for a while. Thankfully it's really easy to install in Nick's car since he has the LATCH system, we haven't tried it in my car yet (i don't have the latch system) but it looks like it may be a little more difficult so we will see. Over all I am really excited about his new seat, but sad that within the matter of 24 hours we have started a pinterest board with decorations for his first birthday, put up the swing, and installed his new car seat. SLOW. IT. DOWN. !!!!
Trying it out in Nana's living room after it arrived!

In the car! (and daddy making funny faces to make him laugh)

10 months old

Dear Kayden-
Here we are with only 2 months left until your first birthday! I can't believe it's already time to start planning! I can't believe that in just 2 short months I will no longer have a "baby". I'm sure I will shed many tears on September 9th!

This month you have traveled so much! You were gone from home for almost 3 weeks out of the month! We traveled 2,900 miles and for the most part you were a really good baby! We went to Florida with Nana, Grampa, Uncle Jeremy, Aunt Paige, and Audrey. This was your first long car ride, and your first time at the beach! You were WONDERFUL on the trip down! You slept almost all the way there and when you were awake you just looked around trying to figure out what we were doing. You LOVED the beach and enjoyed playing in the sand, the water, and taking naps on the beach. I couldn't have asked for a better baby, especially since your daddy wasn't there!

After Florida, we went to go visit daddy in North Carolina! You hadn't seen daddy for 2 weeks, and even though it was late at night when daddy got to the hotel, you woke up and were so happy to see him! We stayed in North Carolina with daddy until he was finished recording and then we all headed to South Carolina to meet up with Gramma, Pops... and the WHOLE gang! You loved myrtle beach and you were a great baby there too! It was obvious that you loved when daddy took you out into the ocean and to the pool too! You sure did miss him!

This month you also started getting TEETH!!!! You got 4 teeth all at the same time. You did great with getting so many at one time. Mommy was starting to think you would never get teeth but there they were!!

You understand so much, even though you don't say very clear words right now. We say "dadadadadada" all the time and try to say dog but it comes out more like "dah" (but it definitely sounds different than "dada"! We can ask you several things though and it is obvious that you understand what we are saying. We can ask you "where's the dog" and you will instantly look through the kitchen door to the back door and start crawling over there. We can also ask you "where's mommy" or "where's daddy" and you will look at the correct person. If mommy asks you where daddy is when he is not home you instantly look up to the big picture of mommy and daddy on the wall. You are so smart my sweet boy and I love watching you learn new things everyday!

You crawl, pull up and cruise all over the place. You can stand for a couple seconds by yourself and you try to walk by yourself but don't have quite the balance yet. It won't be long though my sweet baby... and then you will official be a toddler, and not mommy's little baby anymore! Take your time sweet boy... mommy's not quite ready yet!

Here we go onto another month. This will be mommy's last full month staying home with you, so please don't grow up too fast sweet boy!
Love you forever,
Mommy

The Gluten Free Diet

Well, it looks like we will be switching K-man to a gluten free diet. We knew there was a chance of this when he had such a hard time with the baby cereals. I was really hoping we wouldn't have to, but more and more things are pointing to celiacs disease. He has had cereal and the gerber puffs for a while and his gas and constipation have stayed around. I was doing some research on the issue and two of the main symptoms in infants is gas and constipation. Cheerios, gerber puffs, goldfish, and animal crackers all have gluten in them, which is everything he eats for snacks during the day.

I felt like he was having a lot of gas problems, more so for his age. We have to still give him mylicon drops every night and even those don't help. He will wake up from the gas, and he has to be pressed up against one of us when he sleeps a lot of nights. I'm really hoping that by eliminating these foods, he will sleep better also. Here's to hoping. In my research I also found that it can lead to iron deficiency, which he have to give iron drops right now because of an iron deficiency. We had talked to the pediatrician about the baby cereals at his 9 month appointment and she said to watch him as he started to eat more solid foods, so I guess we will report back to her at his 12 month appointment and let her know that he is still having gas and constipation issues. While I was hoping it would not be celiacs, I'm just ready for his tummy to feel better and for him to not have such pain.

Big Boy Food!

We are finally back from all our traveling! I'll post more about that later but I just have to post pictures of Kayden eating his first "Big Boy Meal". We've been trying for a while to get him to eat chunks of food rather than just the purees. He never has been interested in anything other than his puffs, cheerios, and yogurt melts. While we were in South Carolina, we decided to let him try some pieces of chicken when we were out at a restaurant one night. He LOVED chicken! We didn't give him too much of it though because I wanted to make sure he digested it alright and it didn't upset his stomach.

Today, I made a pork roast and decided to give him some pieces of that and fixed him some sweet peas to eat a long with it. He would never eat pureed peas so I was interested in seeing if he would eat the big ones. LOVED all of it! Guess he is started to get the hang of eating big boy food! Good thing! I was scared he was going to eat purees for forever!!

Teeth!!!

We have teeth!!! 4 of them to be exact!!! I was starting to think Kayden would never get teeth. His cousin Avery and Audrey both didn't get teeth until around their 1 year birthday so I wasn't too concerned, but we were having a hard time getting him to eat chunky food. Audrey was eating like a pro with no teeth. The girl could have gone on to live the rest of her life without any teeth and still eat anything she wanted. I was amazed! But Kayden would spit anything out that wasn't pureed besides puffs, yogurt melts, and cheerios. I tried making our homemade baby food extra chunky but he was not a fan! I was getting worried because I would really like to have him weaned off most of his bottles by the time he is 12 months, but with him not eating diced foods I felt like that was never going to happen.

While we were in Florida, my mom and I both thought we felt and saw a tooth on the bottom and top but Kayden would never let us really look in there or even really stick a finger in there so we kinda just left it. He has really hard gums so even when he was like 4 months old it felt like he had teeth and they are so close to the gum line that you could kinda see little white spots but obviously nothing ever broke through. On our way home from Florida, Kayden was a BEAR! I mean, he screamed all.the.way. home. 14 hours, and he had to have at least screamed for half of it. It was miserable. When we got home, I was finally able to stick my finger in his mouth and felt something really sharp on the bottom, but he still wouldn't let me look in.

The day before we were to leave to go see Nick in North Carolina I started noticing a lot of gunk coming out of Kayden's eye. He had a blocked tear duct when he was born and it was just like that, only it was coming out of both eyes. I emailed the pediatrician, knowing that we would be gone for 2 weeks and wanted to make sure it wasn't anything like pink eye or an ear or eye infection. She had me bring him in and she was able to make him open his mouth up and we saw a little tooth on the bottom that had just broken through the gums. He did end up with what we think were the beginning stages of pink eye but drops cleared it up really fast.

While we were down in North Carolina, Nick and I were out eating at a pizza place and Nick had Kayden laying down in his lap tickling Kayden. Kayden would throw his head back and open his mouth cackling and Nick goes "Oh my gosh look at this tooth!" There was a HUGE tooth through the gums on the top. A lot of it was sticking through, more than the tooth on the bottom. It was an actual tooth through the gums! and it was HUGE! It's actually kinda scary how big it looks! I couldn't believe it! We were able to see that one, and a hint of the other front tooth next to it, and then both bottom teeth are making their way through! A friend on facebook said that she had the difficulty with getting her son to eat chunks of food too until he got his teeth through at 10 months so hopefully that was why he wasn't interested in the chunks of food because it felt weird to his gums. He really hasn't even been eating much food at all because of his teeth, besides his bottles. Hopefully these 4 teeth will make their way through and we will be able to start weaning bottles and get more of a regular breakfast/lunch/dinner thing going on. I can't believe my baby has TEETH! AND is 2.5 months away from being ONE. I'm getting a little depressed :(

P.S. I'll try getting a picture of his teeth. He is REALLY difficult for some reason when it comes to prying his mouth open to feel/look at them!