The 3 H's: Helmet, Homecoming, Halloween

-HELMET-

The past few weeks have been a busy few weeks in the Jackson household!  Two weeks ago, Nathan started wearing his helmet, and I think he has actually taken well to it, as much as he can.  We gradually phased him into wearing it for the full 23 hours a day throughout the first week (Day 1: 1 hr on 1 hr off, Day 2: 2 hrs on 1 hr off, Day 3: 4 hrs on 1 hr off, Day 4: 8 hrs on 1 hr off, and Day 5: 23 hrs on, 1 hr off).  We take it off 30 minutes in the morning to clean it and dress him, then 30 minutes off at night to bathe him and get him ready for bed.  The biggest struggle more than anything is just putting it on and taking it off.  He's not the biggest fan of that, but like his daddy, he has a short term memory, so he doesn't really remember 5 minutes after we put it on!

When we were getting fitted for the helmet, the "orthotic guy" (I don't know what else to call him), pointed us to a great company called BlingYourBand.com.  This lady had a child who was prescribed to wear a helmet like Nate's, and she wanted to decorate it.  So she made a business out of making stickers to decorate the helmet.  She's made a bunch of different helmet designs just through creating customized stickers that go on the helmet and modge podge the stickers to seal it.  If you want to check out more of their stuff, just click HERE.

So this is what we chose to decorate Nate's helmet with:

All Smiles :)

We love it that his hair spikes out the top!

-HOMECOMING-

A couple of weekends ago, Nate, Britt, and I, loaded up the car (90% of which was Nate's) and headed North for TCU's Homecoming Weekend.  For those that don't know, Britt is a 2008 graduate of TCU, and I went there for 2 years before finishing up at Sam Houston State.  To plainly say it, we love TCU!  It was also Nate's 8 Month Birthday.  We were able to meet up with the Connelly's and Dore's on our way in, and finally got to meet Maggie!  It's always a blessing and pleasure to catch up with them and we really love doing life with them (even if we're 200 miles away).  We stayed with Brittney's big from her sorority, Laura, and her husband, Danny.  On game day, we tailgated with Laura and Danny and some of their friends, then went and saw Britt's best friend, Jenn, at their tailgate.  TCU recently just renovated their stadium, and let me tell you it's awesome!  Nate had a good time getting all the attention from all of our friends, and his helmet was a hit with the TCU fans!  One thing we didn't think about was the noise.  Nate didn't like the noise too much, so Britt ended up walking the concourse with him until half time.  We'll just have to phase him in with High School football next year (Go Highlanders)!  All in all, it was a good trip and we loved the time we got to spend with our dear friends.

He's growing up too fast

We can sit on our own!

Britt, Nate, and Jenn

Nate and his first Buccee's Experience!  He kept taking the straw out of my drink!

- HALLOWEEN -

I know it's not halloween yet, I just needed another H word to fill the title out.... I guess I could've used Harvest, but ehh...

This past weekend we went to a pumpkin patch to take a couple of family photos with my parents at the church I grew up in here in The Woodlands.  Nate had a blast and we got some decent family photos too!

We're definitely doing our best to stay busy, but I love our little family life.

-Ryan

The Most Overdue Post.....Ever!

I'm gonna chalk this one up to the "we just got really busy and never really slowed down enough to write about our life" category.  I guess that's why we named our blog "The Crazy Jackson Life".  It really is crazy.

We touched on this very briefly in our post from June, but one of the craziest changes in our lives has been that WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!  Knowing our apartment lease was up in June, we started looking at houses in April, and signed our lives away on the last day of May.  Huge thanks go out to the friends and family who helped us paint, clean, and all the other stuff you did for us as we moved.  We've been in the house almost 4.5 months now (and still don't have a picture of our whole family out in front), and we really do love it!  We're slowly but surely getting adjusted into being homeowners, but I think we'll be able to get the hang of it sooner or later (I just have to figure out how to regrow the grass I killed during the summer)!  I've kind of adopted the phrase "A summer of neglect equals a fall of regret" when it comes to yard work.  I think it'll be ok though, cause both dad's have impeccable yards and I will be consulting them frequently throughout this first year.

Guest Bathroom

Nate's Crib area

Kitchen

Living room open to Kitchen and leading to Master bedroom

Master Bath (New Mirror and Tile Splash)

More pics to come later!

In August, we were able to take Nathan to his first Wedding!  Chris, Britt's brother, got married on August 4th, and both Britt and I were able to take part in the wedding party.  Nate was able to meet a lot of extended family from Utah, and loved flirting with Pop-Pop (my dad) during the ceremony to keep him entertained.  Who was more entertained, we'll never know!  We love Uncle Chris and welcome Aunt Kaylen into the family!

 

The Honorary Groomsman with the Groom 

Our first wedding as a family of 3!

And last but not least, in September, Britt turned 27!  To celebrate, I took Britt to the Kelly Clarkson/The Fray concert here in The Woodlands that happened to be the exact date of her birthday.  We really enjoyed getting to spend some time together without the little guy (even though we love him so much!) and are very grateful that we have both sets of grandparents that live within 10 miles of us that eagerly volunteer to watch him for a few hours.

The birthday girl and her "kinda cool" date!

On the Nathan front, he's getting so big!  Next week, he'll be 8 months old!  It's so hard to believe it, but we're loving every second of it.  He's eating solid foods 4 times a day (He loves vegetables, but still getting adjusted to fruits), loves rolling around on his playmat, is a professional foot chomper, is extremely active in his jumper, but I think his real love is water!  Bath time is definitely the highlight of the day for him, and for us (for entertainment purposes).  Most of the time when I bathe him I have to change my shirt afterwards because he's kicking and splashing around so much!  Over the summer we even took a dip in the pool (both grandparents have one - "cha ching")!  We love being in the water, and definitely think this next summer will be a ton of fun!  This week he also started cutting his first set of teeth.  Fun times do lie ahead (I think....)  Next week will be a tough week for us, as Nathan will start wearing his cranial molding helmet.  Britt wrote a post earlier tonight about that whole process.  You can read more about it here.  Prayers will definitely be appreciated for all parties involved!

Pears are our favorite!

Sporting the shades

Somebody found their feet!

We've loved every second of our lives, even though it's been crazy busy and stressful at some points, and look forward to what lies ahead!

-Ryan

Plagio..what??

     As most of you have probably seen in our facebook pictures, Nathan has a very cute "How you doin?" smile like Joey from Friends. 

      However most of you probably didn't know that the "look" is actually caused by a medical condition! When I was pregnant with Nathan he settled into a comfy spot wedged into my pelvic bone and pretty much stayed there for 9 months! This caused the bones in his skull to form a little funky when he was born. I noticed this right away but was assured by our pediatrician that this would go away as he grew. The problem was little man developed the evil known as colic/reflux. He learned very quickly that if he arched his neck to the left he felt better. Apparently, this position shut off the valve in his tummy that caused the reflux and would provide immediate relief. In the long run this constant position led to torticolis (tightening of the neck muscles on the right side). He also spent a ton of time on his back because I was following "back to sleep"religiously to prevent SIDS. The end result was a completely flattened left side of his head. We later discovered this was known as plagiocephaly. 

     

    Positional plagiocephaly (play-gee-oh-seff-a-lee) is the term used to describe a flattened or misshapen head that may result from crowding within the womb or from an infant being placed in the same position (such as on the back) for long periods of time (http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/positional_plagiocephaly.cfm).
Again, being the resident nurse in the family, I asked the pediatrician about his head being misshapen at his 4 month appointment and was assured he would grow out of it. I didn't love that answer but I didn't want to be "that" mom that second guesses everything. Hind sight being 20/20 I have learned that God instilled that mommy instinct for a reason. Plus, I work with babies every day and have a hypersensitive instinct that I will never again ignore! We decided to pick a new doctor because of many other issues. Dr. B, our new doctor that came highly recommended, immediately noticed the flattened head and that Nathan was only rolling to one side, only playing with toys on one side, and would always turn to look at things on his left side. This concerned him as he was basically developmentally handicapped on his right side. He wrote for a physical therapy consult and thus we started this crazy journey.

     In September, we took Nate to Team Approach in Spring.  (Thanks for the rec Kelly Sherrill!)  Sarah is an amazing therapist who showed us some exercises we could do to stretch out the tightness in Nathan's neck.  He just loves us pulling on his neck 15+ times a day...  She also helped us to understand the serious problems with his development he was having.  She showed me how to redirect his play and help him to learn to use his right side.   We have now been doing exercises and stretches for over a month and Nathan is making huge strides!  We also met with a pediatric cranio-facial surgeon about Nathan's skull development.  He prescribed helmet therapy for Nathan.

     This is the worst part.  Nathan will have to wear a prosthetic helmet 23 hours a day for the next 4 months.  The helmet puts pressure on the front left and back right portion of his head, forcing his skull to grow into the "space" left on the front right and back left.  This will hopefully round out his head as he grows.  Once that is done he should be good to go, as this is mainly a cosmetic detail.  However, the wearing of the helmet is supposed to be very uncomfortable/painful the first few weeks as he adjusts to the pressure/presence of the helmet on his poor head, not to mention he is cutting his first installment of teeth, which only adds to little man's discomfort!

    We get the helmet on Monday and covet your prayers for us all as we continue down this road.  It is not a critical condition, more cosmetic than anything.  Still, it is going to be a big adjustment for us all and very uncomfortable for my sweet little boy.

     I will say in all of this we are a)thankful to have a team of doctors and therapists that have been so wonderful in helping though this diagnosis.  b) thankful that overall we have an amazing, healthy, precious baby boy c) grateful for wonderful friends and family that have been with us every step of the way d) very thrilled that Nathan is making such great progress with therapy and will soon be completely "fixed"!

     Please pray that he would adjust well and quickly to the helmet.  We are bracing ourselves for lots of crying/sleepless nights!  Pray that Nate would be able to continue developing appropriately especially with the added weight and off-balancing helmet.  Pray that Ryan and I will be able to be loving and nurturing towards Nathan and to each other.  It has already been a very stressful summer/fall figuring all of this out and meeting with various specialists.  We will post pictures soon of the dreaded helmet!

-Britt