Football Season & Dominic

With football season rapidly approaching, I've been getting rather excited.  I am a huge college football fan, follower of the Seahawks, and put in far too much effort maintaining fantasty teams.  However, this football season will be a little different for us.  First, it'll be our first full football season with three of us at home.  Dominic was born in November of last year, so he was around for a couple of games.  He just didn't get overly excited about them... or notice them.  The other reason things will be different is that one of us will be wearing some new gear for a while.

Dominic's head from the top down

Being the overly protective parents we are, we've been watching out for Dominic on all sorts of things.  Sterilizing every single bottle, slowly testing out new foods, and repeatedly checking for developmental milestones.  On many fronts, he has done extremely well.  His favorite syllable is "da" (we're still working hard on "pa" though).  He officially has 3 teeth with at least 3 more about to come through.  He can sit up, roll all over the place, stand up with help, and nearly crawl.

The only thing that has had us worried has been his head shape.  Despite our best efforts, his overall head shape has ended up being asymmetrical.  The image to the left shows some laser scanned images that were developed to analyze his head shape.  Looking at Dominic in person, his hair is growing in well enough that it really conceals the imbalance, but the images here show a mild to moderate slant.

Overall, this is not a major issue long-term.  As parents though, we want to correct his head shape now while he is still growing since it is not self-correcting.  To make that happen, he's getting some snazzy new head gear that we're calling his helmet.

Helmet view from the front

Helmet view from the left side

The helmet itself is pretty simple.  The concept is that it is sculpted to focus the future growth in areas that will round out his head shape.  Other areas will be held in place by the helmet allowing those "future growth" areas to catch up.

With football season rapidly approaching, Andy and I may be tempted to add one bright red "N" sticker and another "ND" sticker to each side of the helmet so that Dominic will always ready to go for game days!

Bananas!

Last week, in honor of Dominic's six-month birthday, we decided it was time to start him on bananas!

It did not go very well.

 

 

Ah well, maybe next time!

Tummy Time

Today was an exciting day for Dominic.  We've heard of the wonders of "tummy time" through other parents.  Now that babies are recommended to lay/sleep on their backs, tummy time is helpful in muscular development and coordination.

Tummy Time!

Given that Dominic is only 2 weeks old, it's rather early for him to start tummy time as he isn't very mobile.  However, we want to get him used to being on his belly, so he isn't distressed during later sessions of tummy time at an older age.

After Thanksgiving, Dominic's umbilical cord stump fell off.  We gave him a few days for things to heal up and then decided today would be a fun trial run at tummy time.  We laid out the exercise mat and activity gym in our living room.  Then we brought over Dominic and set him down.  It looked nice and comfy, but that may have been a down side.  Dominic was rather sleepy and just crashed.  On the good side, Dominic's first experience with tummy time didn't include crying, distress, or bad memories.  Instead, it was just some half awake glances that devolved into nap time.

Nap time