New solutions

Brennan has really been challenging us.  He climbs everything and will do it over and over again.  I realized that I was saying "no" to him all day and I really don't want to do that.  It's draining on me and he doesn't listen anyway.  Dan's approach is that he really needs to "learn" and there's no way to do it but to teach him.  My approach has always been, even with Sara, to rearrange the house so that it's more kid friendly and then when you are able to communicate with them better later on, teach them then.

I tried Dan's approach for the last two week and I'd had enough.  Brennan has learned to climb up the kitchen chairs and on top of the kitchen table, and wreak havoc on anything up there.  He's been able to dump over juice pitchers, get makers and crayons which he later used to color walls, scissors and even knives that had been left on the table.  It's just not a place for him to be.  So I told him "no" every time he climbed a chair and every time he stared to climb on the table I'd tell him no again and then put him in his crib for time out.  After doing this maybe 20 or 30 times during the day I was tired and he was angry.

Instead I went back to doing it my way.  I put all the chairs in the den over the carpet isolated so he can't climb onto anything dangerous.  In effect building Brennan and obstacle course.  I was amazed how it turned something really negative into something fun and positive.  The kids love playing on all the chairs.  They spend most of the day climbing them, jumping, playing with their toys on them, putting blankets on the chars, and so forth.  Brennan will come right to the edge and jump off into your arms over and over, he thinks it's a fun game.  So the past few days we rearrange the chairs into different obstacle courses.

It's been nice no to have to tell him no over and over and put him in time out, which I think he's really too young to learn anyway.  He just wants to climb.   Is it convenient to have all our chairs in the living room? No not at all.  It does such to have to drag them back and forth when we need them, but it beats the alternative in my opinion.

Today it was 65 degrees which is insane the end of Nov, thanks global warming.  We all played in the back yard in shorts and t-shirts.  Brennan loves to climb up on Sara's slide and play and slide down.  That satisfies some of his climbing urge too, so I was glad the weather accommodated it.

I hope that I can find other solutions like this to things he shouldn't be doing and turn them into something positive because he climbs up everything, nothing in the house is safe again.

He loves  his little "lawn mower" as we call it that he got from Granny KP for his b'day.  He pushes it all over the house and carries things in it, he has even learned to use it as a scooter which is really cute too.

Kibbles and Bits

This is a random post mostly for the purpose of putting up photos and vids that I just dumped off my phone into my computer.


Spends a lot of time in the high chair

Quite a pair :

Has no problem climbing into chairs.

Brennan gives kisses, high fives, and says Nanna, among other talents.
Video

Also he can sing the notes to hot cross buns but I can't seem to get a video of it yet :(

Leaps and Bounds

Brennan is 15 months old and he's changing so fast right now.  He says so many new words.  He even copies sounds that we say to him.  While his grandpa was visiting he said Grandpa.  He also tries to copy multiple words and he babbles a lot too.  I think he'll have this talking thing figured out in no time.  He is probably a little less verbal than Sara was, after all her first word was snowshoeing, however I can imagine in three months that he'll be starting to talk.  Here is a blog post comparison of her at three months older than he is now, just for fun.

Most surprising to me, the other day we sang a word in the tune of Hot Cross Buns and he sung the word back with the right notes.  Maybe he has a really good ear too.  He loves going to Sara's music class and shaking the maracas and bells.  I think we are going to have to start paying for his lessons soon if he keeps participating.

He has become even more active lately too.  He climbs everything he can climb.  We have stopped trying to keep him out of chairs and off the sofa because he's an expert at climbing.  Instead we are trying to teach him to sit down when he gets up there, so far it's not going well.  He's a climber and an adventurer.  He also loves to try and jump out of chairs, which usually ends in him landing on his head.  He will cry and then do it again.

He has learned to ride his airplane by scooting his legs and several months ago, he learned to use his "lawnmower" as a scooter.  I think he's already ready for a push bike or a trike, of course now it's winter.  By Spring though he'll be ready to roll.   He will need a helmet.

We've been trying to feed him more, but so far he's eating about the same and I think his weight is the same.  He is so active he probably burns off the extra calories.

He can do a kissing noise and he gives high fives excitedly too.

Every day seems to be filled with something new.

Halloween 2012

Brennan got to be two things for Halloween.  He just barely fit into his frog costume from last year but he couldn't really walk in it, so the day before Halloween he wore it while we too Sara to lessons and ran errands.  He was super cute and even thought that the frog feet might be duck feet, so he said "quack, quack" and Sara and I were saying to him, "No, Ribbit ribbit".  He was really trying to say ribbit and thought it was pretty funny, here's the vid.  He is really into animal noises right now.

For the actual night of Halloween we let him wear his Bat costume.  He does not really like it and I think it's because the first time we put it on him, we all laughed hilariously and he got upset.  Also, it's harder to put on and probably more uncomfortable, but it's so dang cute.

He didn't really walk that much because he was having trouble seeing and kept falling so we put him in the stroller and he watched Sara trick or treat.  He helped give out candy in front of the house for a long time and had fun looking at all the kids.  I can't wait until next year when he gets to really run and enjoy it!! 

15 month check-up

Brennan had his 15 month check up this week.  Everything was really pretty good.   Luckily his ear infection has totally cleared up and his ears got a clean bill of health.  His height was at 30% so nothing to worry about there.  However his weight has dropped from 22.5 to 21 lbs.  I'm not quite sure why but that set him back into the 5% for weight.  That is actually lower than Sara ever got on her weight chart, just comparing the percentages.

The doctor said that looking at him, he does not look unhealthy in any way so he's not worried about it.  He just suggested that we add more fat into his diet.  Brennan refuses to drink whole milk where he would be getting a large portion of the fat in his diet.  He does like cheese and yogurt thankfully, so we feed him lots of that.  He also gets fish oil caps and chia seeds so that he gets his Omega3's but they are not in any kind of dose to put weight on him.  He has been eating a lot lately and he even has 1 green shake a day, full strength with a lot of ginger (something that I have to leave out of Sara's shake).

I was actually surprised that his weight had dropped because to me he feels heavier and I thought we were doing really well with his diet.  I have no concerns that eventually he will catch up and sadly too,  I think he might even struggle with his weight at some point in his life.  So we really aren't that concerned as long as his weight does not drop further.

Another thing the doctor mentioned is that he has a small hernia.  I was surprised by this because lots of doctors have checked him and never mentioned it. He said it's small and should close up by the time he is 2 but it not, he will need to have surgery.

The other bit of good news is that his iron level has normalized and he is no longer in the iron deficient category.  Hopefully this will help the breath holding spells which do seem to be tapering off a bit.

Brennan got 5 shots including his flu shot and got his finger poked to check his iron and he did very well.  Sara always cried a ton and was very afraid of the doctors and nurses by this point, Brennan seems pretty unaffected as of now.  He's friendly and does not seem to mind the doctor or nurses, he will smile at them and is curious.  He is not a clinger, he wants to be out exploring everything in the office.

I did ask the doctor about Brennan's tantrums and moodiness, whether he thought it might be a personality trait or if there is a medical basis.  He said it's hard to tell but now that his ear infection is gone and his iron is normalized (iron can affect mood, behavior, and sleep) that if it's not teething or some other thing like his developmental age, it might just be his personality.  I hope not and I don't want to label him moody or grumpy yet in my mind so I'm just trying to think positive about it.  Hopefully it will resolve itself.  He does seem very much more serious than Sara was though and they will be different people, there's not question about that.

He is also being very active.  He has learned to climb up on to the couch and chairs, so really there's no stopping him from climbing anymore.  We are considering bolting the furniture to the walls though as a precaution.  He has already tipped over Sara's small bedside table.  Luckily nothing else.

Brennan does have a snugly and cuddly side occasionally when he slows down long enough.  He is really sweet.  He loves to snuggle and cuddle with me and when daddy is home he wants daddy exclusively to himself.  Also, Dan has trained him that when he says, "Give kisses" that Brennan leans his cheek in and lets Dan kiss him on the cheek.  It's really cute.

Also, just this week he gives "high fives" and he has learned the word "no".  He and Sara were in the shopping cart tonight telling each other "no"  it was pretty funny.  Sara would say no and then Brennan would repeat it and she would say back to him, "That's right NO".  He was pulling her hair or something and she was telling him to stop.  I said to Dan, now that they can just tell each other no, maybe we won't have to as much, yea right.

Things are good

Happily I can say that 7 weeks after Brennan's accident he is doing great.  We went for a follow-up appointment at the Burn Center today and they said he might be just borderline showing the beginnings of scaring.  We all decided we'd rather be preemptive and catch it early rather than risk having his mobility compromised on his hand.  They gave us compressions bandages for him to wear, cloth during the day and silicone during the night time.  We will put a sock over his hand to keep the bandages on.  I think because they are pretty tight, he notices them more and pulls them off more readily.   The sock should do the trick.

They noted that his hand and spots on his face are are still quite red, where as the spots on his nose and chin are almost totally gone.  They said anything that is red now is where the most severe burns were and his skin still has lot of blood flow and inflammation there causing it to be red.  They said it might be red for up to a year and those areas are at the most risk for scaring.  Scaring peaks between 1-6 months after the injury so that is why they are watching him so closely.  They don't want him to develop scars bad enough that his mobility is compromised.  They feel pretty confident that the compression bandages will work.  There is a spot that is at the top of his nose that might be starting to scar but they are more wary to put silicone patches on his face, given that he might be able to pull them off and eat them.  They are going to recheck the spot on his face in 6 weeks to see if he will require the silicone patch.

In other news, Brennan has changed leaps and bounds, even from his accident.  He has gotten taller and heavier since his 12 month check up.  He had an ear infection recently and he had gained 3 pounds and his 12 month size pants are getting too small.  He has a cute little smile that he flashes even at strangers.  He LOVES his Daddy.  He likes me a lot too during the day and we have tons of fun playing but when Daddy is home, he wants to be right with Daddy the whole time getting lots of attention.  Dan really loves Brennan every bit as much as he loves Sara, they are best buddies and I'm very glad.   He is fun to play with.  He likes to play games more than Sara.  Sara liked reading and snuggling best, Brennan likes throwing balls, banging toys, tickling, and music.

He is a surprisingly contentious 14 month old.  He has learned to pick up his toys already and put them away in the right places, put our shoes in the shoe cubicle, put trash in the trash can, and close doors.  Also today, his ball was in a basket and he took the basket down, got his ball out, and then put the basket back on the shelf.  I was pretty impressed.   It's looking good for me to have great helpers here.  Especially since Sara totally cleaned the house by herself today without even being told.  I could get used to this.  Don't get me wrong though, the two of them can make some spectacular messes too.

Brennan is very charismatic.  He has a kind of light about him and fun personality that you are drawn to.  I can't wait to see what he's like 6 months or a year from now.  He's already changing so fast this year.  I'm looking forward to Christmas this year and dreading it too, I have no idea how I'm going to keep him out of the tree.  He will want to climb it I'm sure.

Now for pictures. We recently went on a hike to Diamond Fork.  Sara and Brennan hiked hand in hand for quite a while.  They were really cute together.  Brennan had fun playing in the dirt too.

Sara took his jacket off all by herself.  She likes to feed him, put his clothes on, and take them off.  He's her life size doll.  He thinks it's hilarious when she does stuff for him too.  He realizes it's not her job.

  She likes playing ring around the Rosie

Photos more at home, Brennan loves playing piano with Dan.  He looks so friendly and happy in this photo and that's really his personality showing through.

Playing at the park.  Brennan loves the park and the slides the most.  He will go down them over and over. 

At the end of the day, super tired kids.

Moosing around

I'm glad he's feeling better and his hand is healed up because he really loves playing in the back yard.

 

 Of course, he loves to eat dirt too.

I got a much needed high chair pic of him at 14 months. His face is oily because we keep Vitamin E on it.

 Also tonight we tried on his Halloween costume just to make sure it fits before Halloween gets here.  He really didn't like wearing it.  I hope he changes his mind by Halloween or maybe he was just in a bad mood, or maybe it was because Sara and I were laughing really hard and he didn't like it.  It's funny when he spreads out his wings and you can see them and also the bat ears are really floppy.

Of course, Sara had to try hers on too.  She liked hers a lot better.

Almost There!

Brennan has made huge progress in the last three weeks.  Some people say it was their prayers and God that did it and I don't know but I like to think it was mostly the good care we took of him and his ability to heal fast because he's a kid.

His face is totally healed up, only pink skin is left and we put aloe and vitamin E on it several times a day.   We are only wrapping 2 of his fingers, and soon to be on only 1 finger.  His ring finger received the worst burn, followed by his pointer.

He visited the doctor today for his follow up and they were very pleased with how everything looked.  They told us that we are shifting from the wound healing and and bandage phase into the scar prevention phase which lasts the next 20 years of his life.  The doctor said that any burn injury that takes longer than three weeks to heal is more likely to scar, as well as people with fair skin.

He said the scaring, if it occurs, will peak within the next 3-6 months.  We have to feel his skin every day for bumpy lumpiness or change in texture and if we find it, call them immediately.  The faster they catch it the better they can help him.  If we notice scaring, we will take him to the burn center and they will see if they can use scar reducing techniques such as making him a tight glove he would wear at night or putting silicone patches on his face at night. 

They said that he will grow and it could even be 10 years from now that he has trouble, if he hits a growth spurt it could be that all of the sudden his hand feels really tight and uncomfortable and so we won't know what the future holds for him long term.  I think if he has any trouble it will be with his ring finger but all of his fingers are pinkish purple and look like they have very strange skin on them.  I guess we'll have to see what happens.  Maybe we'll get lucky just like we did with his wounds healing up.

We've been giving him extra supplements in his diet to maybe help him.  I've been giving him green shakes with purified fish oil caps, chia seeds, liquid vitamins, and we have been feeding him eggs to hopefully give him lots of omega-3 fatty acids.  Omega 3's are supposed to help reduce inflammation and hopefully will help his skin from the inside, along with the aloe and vitamin E topically.

I'm also glad to report that he is totally off his pain meds.  He had a little withdrawal from the lortab, because he was taking a lot of it for a while, but he's good now.  Also, he is finally sleeping through the night again!

He has to go back to the burn clinic in 1 month to check for scaring.  They are going to keep a close eye on him.  We are glad that our weekly trips up to the U are now only monthly trips.

Also, he has been his usual active self.  He has learned some not so good behaviors lately, probably typical boy behaviors that we didn't see as much with Sara.  We've been trying to teach him not to hit lately and it's probably a result of him having someone else to hit.  He thinks it's funny to go up to Sara and bonk her over the head with his hand.  However he likes to drum on lots of things by whacking it with his hand, so it might just be an extension of that.  She however has become quite sensitive to it and we've been trying to teacher her to teach him how to be nice.  He does seem to listen to us though when we tell him no, he has a good memory, and he has not done it as much.

Also today he learned to say the word "Go".  It was really cute, he kept saying it over and over again.  It's a pretty fitting word for our family, we like to go a lot.  He also will "quack" like a duck, it's really cute.

He got his first pair of tennis shoes and he really likes wearing them and he loves to walk in them.  His walking has really improved, he will walk beside you while you hold his hand, without deviating too much.  He is at a really cute age where he's learning a lot and he's a barrel of monkeys.  He loves to laugh and throw himself in my lap with wild abandon.  We really enjoy our little Moosey guy and we are so glad he's getting better so we can play and squeeze and tickle him again.

Also he loves to play in laundry hampers just like his sister.

My fav pic of them

Healing and Recovery

It has been five days since Brennan's accident but it feels like it's been a month.  Things are much improved here.  He has healed up faster than we had imagined he would and we have a better hold on the situation than we had anticipated.  At first it seemed like just an unbearable thing but we have adapted and we have taking care of him down to a science, especially the bandaging part.

His face has really healed up and maybe look almost normal quite soon.  We bathe him every morning and wash his face to get the old ointment off and then we put ointment on it about 7 times a day. 

Brennan's hand still looks a little bad to me.  Dan says he can see the difference in it and it looks better to him every day.  It will be interesting to see how his doctors feel about it next Tuesday.  I hope they think it has improved a lot. 

Other than bath time and bandage time, where he still screams a lot and he's miserable, his life is pretty normal.  He laughs and plays as rough as always.  We have even adapted so that he can spend time outside because he loves it.  We try to walk in the early morning or early evening so there isn't direct sun on his face.  If the sun is out, we just pull the stroller backwards.   He has really been wanting to go outside in the back yard.  Today I put a plastic band over his sock hand, with tape, which is the same thing we do when he eats.  That way he can play on the ground and not get his bandage dirty or wet.  It worked perfectly.

He helped me pick up the apples with his one good hand:

FIRST HAIR CUT!

Brennan got his first hair cut tonight.  We decided to take him because his hair was getting really fuzzy and sticking up from his head and falling over his ears. 

He got to wear a kids cape and he wasn't too happy about it.   I think he didn't like the clippers either, even though they were almost totally silent. 

We were really happy with how it turned out, it's way shorter in the back and it does not hang over his ears now. 

We got lots of pics and vids of him getting his hair cut, of course.

Post haircut pics, he looks like a big boy now.

The hair cut video.

Brithday Party post

I'm finally getting around to doing Moosey's actual birthday party post. 

We decided to have his birthday at the splash pad this year.  It's kind of nice to have one kid with a summer birthday party.  I was looking forward to it because of the outdoor party options.  It was perfect for all the cousins too that got to have fun in the water.

For some reason it was my idea to make Brennan snake cupcakes.  I have always wanted to try out rainbow cake, so we went to the local cake store and bought all the special dye colors to make the vibrant rainbow cake colors with.  The cake store in Spanish was amazing.  Sadly we will probably only go in it once or twice a year.  Sara has already requested that we go back to the cake store for her birthday party next year too.

Dan's job was to make the frosting for the cupcakes.  He made a lemon/lime frosting for the rainbow cupcakes and chocolate for the chocolate ones.

Sara got to work sorting the candies for the designs on the cupcakes, she liked this job a lot.

The pretty rainbow cakes baked up perfectly.  I can't say it was worth all the effort but it was fun to do it this one time and they were pretty.

At the splash pad, we claimed a pavilion and set up. 
Brennan waits for everyone to show up, wearing his party hat.

The snake cakes

Blowing out the candle. Birthday song video.

The cake mess, I think he enjoyed his birthday cupcake!

Then after everyone got good and covered in sticky cake and frosting, we hit the water jets.  Smart idea I thought.  We didn't have a messy baby for long.

I think Brennan had a great birthday, I'm sure he won't remember it but hopefully someday he'll look back at this blog and smile :)  Happy 1st Birthday sweet little boy, we love you lots!