The big news this month is that Olly is SO BIG! Ok, fine, that’s the news every month. Yesterday I weighed him at home and he came to a whopping 23 pounds. (Yes, I finally replaced the battery in our home scale after more than a year!) Holy moly how is a seven month old 23 pounds?? Joey is 28 pounds and she’s two. Olly is also starting to wear some of his 12-18 month clothes… Again, he’s SEVEN MONTHS OLD. Slow down, kiddo!

I’m not making fun of him. I loooove that he’s growing so well, strong and healthy. I don’t even think he’s that chubby, honestly. Well, his rubber-band wrists are the cutest thing in the entire world. Along with those cheeks. But he’s just a big guy all the way around, very solid.

(This is one of my favorite Olly pictures ever!)

At seven months, Olly is starting to turn into more of a boy than a baby. His little personality is starting to develop. He loves to giggle, loves kisses, and desperately wants to start crawling, though right now the best he can do is a really impressive 360-degree spin. He loves to move. When he’s awake, he wants to wiggle wiggle wiggle. He’s starting to talk and coo and blow raspberries. He’s such a happy little guy, which makes us so happy.

(No wait, this is one of my favorite Olly pictures ever!)

The other big news this month is that Olly is being fitted for a helmet, or technically a Cranial Band, to correct the flattening of the back of his head. It’s a purely cosmetic procedure, where he will wear a helmet until approximately his first birthday, more or less depending on how quickly his skull grows in that time. We’ve known for months that this was a possibility so it was actually a huge relief when we finally got confirmation that yes, he is a candidate and we can stop the wait-and-see game of hoping that the flattening would fix itself with time. If you wait too long, there’s no way to fix it. It has no impact on his brain or any functions whatsoever. It’s just, if he wants to have short hair, he kind of needs a round head.

At four months old our pediatrician noticed that Olly favored turning his head to his left, which is caused by tightening or shortening of the neck muscles on the right side, a condition called torticollis. Because he favored the left, it was putting more pressure on that side of the back of his head, causing it to start to flatten. She recommended physical therapy to correct the muscle issue in the hopes that his head would then fix itself. His torticollis was actually very mild and was most likely caused simply by him feeling more comfortable in that direction. Just like an adult may prefer to sleep on the left side, so did Olly, but an adult’s skull isn’t virtual butter like a baby’s!

He met with the physical therapist every 2-3 weeks for the next two months, and we did daily exercises at home, as well as sneaking into his room to turn his head while he was sleeping and forcing him to sleep in his swing for naps so he wouldn’t be on the flat surface of his mattress. But, because Olly has always been such a good sleeper, sleeping 12-13 hours straight at night, and three naps during the day, there was really just no possible (or safe) way we could keep him from turning to the left. The physical therapist said he was a borderline case for a helmet. The pediatrician said he was a borderline case. So she referred him to a neurosurgeon, a skull expert, to make the final call, and she said he was definitely a candidate.

Thank goodness.

It was such a relief to finally get the go ahead to stop the wait-and-see game. I’ve read things where people imply this is avoidable, and I’m sure sometimes maybe it is, but the truth is we did every single thing possible to fix it. This is just the way Olly is. We didn’t cause it. He didn’t cause it. It just is. He’s completely normal in every other way. Just has a bit of a flat head. No big deal. It’s fixable, so we’ll fix it. And thank goodness our insurance even covers it. He picks up his pretty new blue helmet next week! And then we get to decorate it, haha.