a stylish case of cradle cap

Like many other infants, Kenny is dealing with a slight bout of "cradle cap." According to a lovely site I found online, cradle cap can be understood thusly:

"We are constantly making new skin cells at about the rate that we lose old, dry skin cells. The old skin falls off and we usually don't even notice the process. In many healthy infants, the skin cells on their scalp grow faster than they can fall off, leaving a layer of somewhat crusty, extra skin.

Cradle cap is a crusting and scaling rash found on the scalps of many healthy babies. The sebaceous glands in their skin are hyperactivated often because of mom’s hormones that crossed the placenta just before birth. These glands pump out a greasy substance that keeps the old skin cells attached as it dries."

So there you have it. Kenny's scalp is peeling like Mommy and Daddy did after they got burnt to a crisp on their honeymoon in Hawaii. Fortunately for the boy, his peeling is a lot less obvious and a million times less painful. Well, that is, when we don't get overexuberant in our "cleaning" of his head.

As the pictures above attest, we often find ourselves picking at the boy's noggin, trying to help the cradle cap along. What breaks your heart is that sometimes when you get some of the peeling skin, you also take a few hairs as well. On that note, his hair does seem to be lightening up a bit. This makes me curious, as my mom says my thick head of dark hair I was born with eventually fell out and was replaced by the toe-head blond locks of my youth (my hair didn't darken until I was 13 or so).

In the meantime, we'll continue our gorilla-esque grooming and see if we can't help this cradle cap run its course.