4 Months old

My baby boy Daylen is four months old! We always think he is so small and delicate, but we tend to forget how big and husky Kason was/is! Our delicate little Daylen is in the 95 percentile for height and 50-75 percentile for weight. He's not so small or delicate after all!

Here are his stats:
Height: 27" (Kason at this age was 28")
Weight: 15 lbs (Kason was 18 lbs 13 oz!)

Daylen must remember Kason from heaven because no one can get him to smile like Kason can! He LOVES his big brother and already idolizes him. Kason rolls on him, pulls his arms, legs, head, but through all that Daylen just grins at Kason with pure adoration. I hope they continue to love each other for a long time, otherwise Daylen is in for some trouble!

Kason's birthday is next month and we are having a big family birthday party, so I have been scouting ideas on Pinterest. One idea I LOVED was a rainbow cake. I like to use my giant cupcake mold so Kason can have a cake all to himself to destroy, but I wasn't sure how the rainbow cake would transfer. I decided to test it out today during naptime. I ordered some fabulous gel food colors online to get the right hues.

The batter looked amazing and delicious!
I poured one color right on top of the other into the mold. I had leftover batter so I decided to make a simple single layer cake as well. Good thing I did!!! I actually read the directions on the cake box and they specifically said to only grease the bottom of the pan. I knew better, but was influenced by LC's cake post a few weeks ago and didn't flour the pan as well! As a result my giant cupcake was a giant flop. Only half came out of the pan when I overturned it. :( Oh well, lesson learned for when I make it in a few weeks. On the bright side, the colors inside the cake were marvelous! Here's the single layer cake I made:

Kason was a huge help. Can you imagine anything worse than a boisterous almost-two-year-old in a kitchen filled with rainbow dyed cake batter bowls?

Here's the finished product. It was delicious AND turned out pretty cool! I can't wait to do it on a larger scale next month.

Day Day helped me in the kitchen, too!

Catch Up

This little man will be 4 months old on Wednesday! Can you believe it?!?!?

A LOT has happened since my last post:
1. Kason and Daylen both caught a nasty fever bug with FEVER and irritability as the only two symptoms. Daylen was not quite 2 months old and was otherwise fine, so my doc told me just to bring him in at his normal appointment.

2. At his 2 month appointment Daylen was 24 1/2" tall and 12 lbs 3 oz. Kason at that age had him by exactly 2 pounds and 1 inch. :)

3. I caught a NASTY bug that left me with a sore throat for 10 (yes, TEN) days! Of course Daylen caught that, too. He woke up one morning at 2am with a temp of 101.5. I called my doc in a panic (he was STILL under that magic 3 month mark where fevers aren't a huge deal anymore) and the on call doc told me if it didn't come down with Tylenol to go directly to Texas Children's ER. We were pretty sure it was just the bug I had but wanted to play it safe. Luckily, after a dose of Tylenol and a tepid bath his temp returned to normal and he was a happy camper.

4. About two weeks ago Daylen started rolling from his back to his tummy:

5. I am embarrassed to admit that Daylen had been sharing a bed with Damien and me until about a week ago. Well, when he started trying to roll over in our fluffy bed I knew I had to stop that!!! He had also been waking up every 45 minutes to an hour to nurse. My paranoia about my low milk supply prevented me from denying the sweet little angel...... Four months of up 6 times a night cured my paranoia! I will happily supplement a few ounces of formula from now on because Daylen is magically sleeping 7-8 hour stretches!!! Last night he went to bed at 8:00 pm, kinda woke up at 3:30am, nursed, then slept until 8am when I had to wake him up! It was AMAZING! Of course, now Kason has decided he wants to cry for mama at 5 in the morning. It's almost like they plan it.

6. I braved taking the boys to church alone for the first time ever today. It did not go well. Kason is of course a maniac. He is energetic, loud, busy, oblivious and curious. A lethal combination. His behavior in Sacrament meeting today was no exception. My lovely friend SC invited us to sit with her family so I would have help wrangling K. Before we even sat down Kason ran away from me out into the foyer. It's pretty hard chasing after an almost-2-year old while carrying a carseat. I had to drop Daylen off with SC's family and then run and catch Kason. (I should have learned from this.....) During the meeting Kason did his usual loud chatter mixed in with loud whining and occasional loud crying. He told everyone "No" and behaved as if I've never disciplined him in his entire existence. It was not embarrassing. Not at all. Right after Sacrament Kason wanted to go say hi to one of his favorite people, AO. She was sitting literally two feet away from me so I encouraged him. As I watched him FROM TWO FEET AWAY a crowd of people swept between us and Kason DISAPPEARED. Seriously. I couldn't see him anywhere! I frantically pushed through people with the carseat (Sorry Daylen!) and ran out into the foyer to see if that's where he had gone. No such luck. I started to seriously freak out. Like seriously. I know that we were in church, around people who know Kason, know me, know Damien, etc. But I experienced pure panic. I left Daylen (again, sorry Daylen) with some sweet friends and ran back into the chapel to find Kason. Luckily my VTer found him playing the piano. Of course. I was pretty upset at this point and was ready to bail out and call it a day, but some more friends reassured me and I decided to try taking both boys with me to Primary. I don't dare let Kason go to nursery, I am sick of Daylen being sick! (That is a future LONG blog post. In short, it's just my personal kind of crazy.) Kason sat quietly on my lap for about the first 15 minutes or so of Primary. Then he began whining, head butting my face, writhing to get down, etc. So I let him down and kinda just chased after him. Let me tell ya, that kid does not stop. He looks for stuff to get into constantly. By the time he dumped out a bag of magnets I had had it! I was so embarrassed and so frustrated by his behavior that I didn't know what to do. I took him to the back of the room, packed up and high-tailed it outta there. I wasn't mad at him, he's just being normal Kason, but I was so frustrated at how hard it was. I was frustrated that I'm so scared of him getting Daylen sick that I won't let him go to Nursery. I'm frustrated with myself, my OCD (self-diagnosed thank you very much), and my husband for working every other weekend (totally not his fault, but I like to blame....). I'm going to try again in two weeks. But I am going to give myself permission to leave after Sacrament Meeting if it gets too hard. I always feel better if I have an "out".

Almost 8 Weeks

Little D will be 8 weeks old on Saturday. The time has flown and I can't believe so much has happened in such a short period of time!!!

About two weeks ago I had my gallbladder removed. Here's a lovely pic. I had two crazy gallbladder attacks within one week and thought I was going to die! I'm very grateful for modern medicine and laparoscopic surgery! I would have recovered very quickly except on the day I had surgery Daylen started feeling hot. His temp slowly climbed from 99.6 to 100.2, where it stayed all night long. I even had my wonderful friend LM come over with her thermometers to make sure we were getting an accurate reading. I called my pediatrician's on call doc to see what we should do, since a reading of 100.4 in a newborn is kind of an emergency. He said to sit tight and if it reached 100.4 to start worrying because then he might be worried about meningitis. Yes, he seriously mentioned meningitis to ME, worrier extraordinaire. So of course I didn't rest or sleep at all that night. Neither did poor Daylen, who was violated by a thermometer about 8 times!!! In the morning I took his temp again and it had reached the magical 100.4 mark. Since I was on strict orders to not lift over 20 pounds and couldn't stay home with Kason I took Daylen to the doctor. My pediatrician is amazing and totally reassured me. (I ran in crying, no appointment and they saw me within about 5 minutes! They rock!). She said Daylen looked healthy and happy so his fever was probably just a cold he caught from Kason, aka Germosaurus. She sent me to get some bloodwork done and told me to give him Tylenol. Sure enough, his fever came down with just a dose of Tylenol and stayed down all night. I was so relieved we didn't need a spinal tap! Since then Daylen caught a cold from me and had another little fever, we all caught the wonderful stomach bug circulating, and I had a phantom gallbladder attack. It never slows down, does it???

Little green monster

Gallstones are no bueno, so my gallbladder is going bye-bye on Tuesday. Do you think removing an organ will help make my tummy a little flatter?

BTW, if your upper abdomen hurts like crazy and the pain radiates into your back, go to the ER. My doc was mad that I endured two such episodes before I called her during normal office hours. I thought it was just bad post-partum gas.....I certainly wasn't going to the ER for that!!!

Daylen Sonne Niko

Meet the latest addition to the Niko Family:

Daylen was a full two pounds lighter than Kason at 7 lbs 11 oz BUT was an inch taller at 22".

The Story:
I had been having contractions off and on for a few days and finally called my doctor on Friday, October 7 around 5 pm. I told her I wanted to go to the hospital but didn't want to be sent home, so she said "Go! Since you're already dilated to a 3 this will just be an augmentation of labor, not an induction." So I went! I took my time, showered, arranged for Unka Bo, Bop, and Onwy (Uncle Mo, Deb and Henry) to come watch Kason for the night and headed off to the hospital. We arrived around 8:30 and I had contractions 4-6 minutes apart until about 10 when they STOPPED. Boo. So they gave me pitocin around 10:45 to get me going again. By this time I was still only dilated to a 3-4. My contractions were not painful but I started to notice them around midnight, so I asked for the epidural since I didn't want to wait too long. At 12:40 I was HATING my nurse and couldn't talk/breathe through my contractions, they were so intense! The anesthesiologist finally came and started my epidural around 1am.... but it only worked for my right half! After I got my epidural I was STILL only dilated to a 5, talk about disappointment!!!
The nurse and doc had me lay on my left side in hopes of spreading the anesthetic. At 1:10 am I made a joke about feeling like something was coming out of me.... Thank goodness I had my wonderful friend Lyndsay M there with me, she is also an L&D nurse! She told me to call my nurse so I could be checked. Sure enough, when the nurse checked me I was already a 10! I went from a 5 to 10 in only ten minutes!!! I had to labor down until my doc arrived, which was about 1:30, then I had to wait for her to get scrubbed, etc. The nurse wanted me to give a practice push while my doc was scrubbing in (even after I warned her that I was a great pusher!) and yelled at me to stop before I even got started. When my doc was finally ready I had him out in 2.5 pushes! The .5 was because I stopped halfway through my second push to try to see what they were all gasping at- apparently the head came out and the gasp was a normal reaction! So other than waiting a little too long for my epidural Daylen's birth experience was way easier than Kason's!!! A full two pounds easier!
Daylen is already a super sweet baby. He definitely knows his mama and cries when anyone (including Daddy) holds him. I have been struggling with breastfeeding, I just don't produce enough milk for my hungry, growing boys. I have had to supplement with formula but am still trying to build my supply so I can breastfeed exclusively. It's not going so well, especially with a 19 month old running around!


Other than taking full advantage of being naughty when I'm feeding Daylen, Kason has been adjusting very well! He LOVES Daylen and always wants to hold him. When he wakes up he wants to say Hi to Day-Day and give him a kiss- it is super sweet.

I love our two boys!!!