1st Christmas Blues

Well, Christmas has come and gone, almost unnoticed by the Szolushas. With my immediate family cancelling our usual Christmas Eve and Christmas get together (because of much needed rest) and no other family gathering known to us we decided to have a low key weekend at home. Our weekend has definitely been low key as most would describe, but somehow with a very sick little Axel, Keith and I, are still exhausted! We actually made plans with friends to have dinner, drinks and game playing on Christmas Eve, but Axel decided he wanted to visit the ER.

Axel's cold like symptoms and fussiness started increasing again about a week ago. He had been feeling warm to me for a few days, but his temperature was always between 99 and 100 degrees. Keith and I had decided that he had to be finally getting his first tooth with the runny nose, loose stools, decreased appetite and increased fussiness, a.k.a. the inability to sleep more than two hours straight. Unfortunately, we were wrong again as Axel had a full blown sand paper like rash over his entire body by late afternoon on Christmas Eve. After doing such a good job of packing the car, preparing a salad and getting ready for Church, we had to leave church early, cancel on our friends and head to the ER, per the advice nurse we called. Not exactly what we had in mind with setting our own traditions, but the tradition making is definitely a work in progress :)

Here Axel and I are before our morning walk Christmas morning.
Good thing is Axel finally ate his first solid food today after three days of no solids and hardly any milk consumption. He also is back up to nearly 30oz so we are both happy about that. Apparently, for those of you wondering Axel is still suffering from the 5th disease that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. This is his 5th week of it! To add to the poor guys discomfort he appeared to loose his voice a couple of days ago, but has recovered most of it today. Keith and I are not totally convinced that all of his symptoms are because of the 5th disease virus, but all we care about is that he is on the right track and getting healthy.

Despite Axel being sick he always loves to be outside. In order to calm Axel we went on several walks and a Burley ride together Thursday and Friday. It was really nice to spend the entire day together two days in a row! I love family time!

I also wanted to mention Axel did great when we went to our friend Dai's house for dinner last Sunday. He fell asleep marvelously in the pack and play. The only difficult part was getting him to fall back to sleep when we got home. Oh well, practice makes perfect. We will be trying this dinner thing with Axel sleeping in the pack and play more often in the future :) Here is Axel playing on Laura's key board (Dai's daughter). He loved it to say the least!
Here is Axel all ready to take the dogs for a walk before heading to Dai's house for dinner. I think he loves the dogs more than Keith does!
I showed Keith one of Axel's favorite games. 'Where's Axel?' Axel and I started playing this when he was about 3 months while I folded laundry. As you can see he thinks it is the greatest thing!

I have talked about how much Axel loves crackers now. Here is a video of Axel thoroughly enjoying one of his crackers.

Last I leave you with Axel playing with his new alphabet caterpillar. Thanks Grandma Susan!

Big boy...or little boy?

Since our last post Axel has officially become a big boy as he is now in a big boy car seat. He had out grown his old car seat over a month or two ago, but it wasn't until this past Thursday that we finally went to Lucile Packard Children's Hospital for the car seat installation. They provide an amazing service of helping us busy parents to install new car seats properly. His new car seat installation was much more complicated then his previous car seat so I am glad we went. The only sad thing about Axel being in a grown up car seat is that the convenience of carrying him in and out of the car without unbuckling him is gone. Today for the first time coming home from day care he woke when I got him out of the car instead of taking a longer nap. He also didn't seem as comfortable sleeping because he is more upright, or so it seems. With the above pictures it looks like Axel really is a big boy, but here is a picture of him from the back of the car. From this view his car seat looks like an over sized king's throne :) Yes, I know my car is dirty. Washing it is on the to do list! Last week the huge batch of Kringlas that Grandma Sonia made arrived. Axel, Keith and I have all enjoyed eating them. I believe we have easily consumed a third of them already :) You can see Axel is concentrating hard at figuring out how to get it in his mouth. Daddy also had Axel try some persimmon, but I don't think he liked it nearly as much as the Kringlas. Can you see how Axel's hair is coming in nicely from the above picture? We are soooooo excited to see what our boy looks like with a full head of hair. Just a few more months!!!! Keith and I think it is kind of ironic that Axel's hair is where most men's bald spots would be. :) Axel has also been scooting much more lately as well as walking with me holding onto him and going from sit to stand. The only one I was able to capture on film was his combat scooting since I only have two hands :). I think he is ready to join his cousin Cory in the army :)
As you can hear from the video Axel is still under the weather. He is much better overall, but wakes with a running/crusty nose in the morning and coughs throughout the day. We are hoping he will be 100% shortly. We don't mind him being sick, but the unpredictable sleep schedule is starting to wear on Keith and I. It will truly be amazing the first time we get 8 hours of sleep straight. Right now we are thankful for 4 hours straight when we can get it. I finally got a video of Axel playing tug of war with the dogs. As I have said many times before he LOVES the dogs, their toys and playing with them. I am sure you can hear how much he is enjoying himself.

We hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and we will post again shortly!

It's Christmas time at the Szolushas

Axel has been blessed with very loving grandparents. This week re-iterated how loved he is by the many Christmas presents that showed up on our front porch. (not that gifts = love, but you get the point). Since Mommy and Daddy are not very good at keeping secrets or waiting to open up gifts and because Axel is really too young to know what Christmas is Mommy decided to open up all of Axel's gifts early. Grammy and Grampy Goodrow sent Axel ABC small wooden blocks and other fun "Melissa and Doug" toys. Axel absolutely loves the wooden blocks or should I say the wooden case that holds the blocks :) Grandma and Grandpa Burgess sent awesome foam alphabet play mats. Now both Axel and Mommy feel safe and better about Axel playing on the floor. Axel likes them so much he tries to play with the mats instead of on them :) Gramma Susan bought Axel a robe for after bath time months ago. I finally had the chance to put Axel in it to take some photos. Axel has officially grown out of his 3-6 month clothing and is now wearing 6 month, 6-9 month and some 9 month clothing. We want to give another shout out and thank you to the Anderson's for all of the clothing they passed on to Axel. We are sooooo grateful!!!! On the last posting I included a few photos of Axel feeding himself. Well he not only like to feed himself now, but the dogs as well. Touis learned about a month ago that if he sits next to Axel he will get some food that falls on the ground. Now Touis is even more excited seeing that Axel is intentionally dropping food for him. I had to include one more picture of Axel playing with one of the dog's toys. Grandpa Brian found squeaky feet for the dogs last year for Christmas. They have provided the dogs with hours of fun and from the looks of it will provide Axel with hours of more fun :) Here is a video of Axel's spinning and scooting. I finally was able to capture it since I don't feel I have to spot his head anymore with the foam mats. Enjoy!

Oh, I promise next year that we will give Axel a "real" Christmas and wait to open up his gifts......

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Good morning! The Szolushas are alive and well.


We are glad that the week is nearly over as we all recover from being sick. It has been a long two weeks since Thanksgiving with the entire household being under the weather. After doing a web search and talking with Axel's Dr. it looks like Axel was suffering from the 5th disease, or slapped cheek disease. His red cheeks are gone and the rash on his body is almost 100% gone as well. The slapped cheek disease dries the skin out so Axel has had a very uncomfortable two weeks considering his already dry skin from his icthyosis. If you look closely at the pictures you will see all of his scars on his head from scratching himself.

Are happy and smiley baby has returned and his new favorite thing to do is watch the dogs play fetch. He laughs up a storm watching them bring the ball or foot to me, but he finds it more hilarious when I struggle to grab the ball or foot from the dogs to throw it again. For those of you who know Louis the best part about playing catch is the tug of war game in between throws.

Axel is still not crawling, but does loves to scoot backwards and spin himself around on his belly. He occasionally scoots forward and attempts to crawl. The only thing to entice him is my cell phone or a doggy toy. He much rather fuss until I help him up to the standing position and then he gets really excited and starts dancing and jumping in place. He loves to walk with me holding onto him and he loves to play sit to stand. I got tired just watching him yesterday, as I am not feeling so hot myself. He must have sat and stood 100 times before getting tired himself.

I have officially become a "bad" mommy as I now no longer care if he plays or sucks on the doggy toys. I rather him have fun and be happy. Here he is sucking on the doggy bowl and playing with Touis' doggy bone. The red bone weights at least a pound and Axel has no problem lifting and banging it against the ground. His strength amazes me!





Yesterday I decided to let Axel try crackers. He had so much fun feeding himself. Here are a few pictures of him in action.





I know this is short, but we didn't get a lot of pictures with all of us being a bit cranky :) We have a long weekend of rain ahead of us so hopefully with both daddy and mommy home we will have some good photo opportunities!

I hope everyone enjoys their weekend and stays warm and dry!

Rough Times.....

Axel turned 8 months on Monday and with it came the worst cold yet. Axel has been miserable all week, but is slowly getting better. The poor guy woke up with a cold in the middle of the night on Sunday. He has been sick all week. On Tuesday he developed a nose bleed from his skin being so dry and irritated with the congestion and constant runny nose. As you can imagine the Szolushas are pretty sleep deprived. Keith and I have been trying to fight off the virus ourselves. We both have had a few close calls of getting sick, but it looks likes Keith lost in the battle and is now officially suffering from a full blown cold. Keith stayed home with Axel on Monday because he was feeling sick himself. We thought the rest would prevent him from contracting the full blown cold, but unfortunately it just held it off for a few days.


Axel has stopped napping since Thanksgiving and his cold. He somehow forgot how to put himself to sleep and during the day doesn't even want my help. He rather just toss and turn in his crib and cry off and on for 30 minutes. He is crying now which just breaks my heart. I try to rock him and sooth him but he is so miserable he really doesn't want the help. I am hoping his congestion clears up more so that his sleeping habits are back to normal by the time Monday rolls around.

Axel is becoming more and more aware of all of the little things around him. When I am feeding him or when he is on the dog couch he will stop to pick up dropped crumbs/food or fuzz from the dog blanket. I find it amusing to see him analyze the texture and shape of the little objects in his hands.

Yesterday, Axel met Santa Claus. He was a little out of it because of his cold. You can see from this picture below that he looks a little dazed and confused.

Here he is before Santa all bundled up!


Axel's expression with Santa Claus, shows perfectly how I feel right now. My first grandparent passed away early Tuesday morning. It is so hard to put into words how I feel. I have had to deal with a lot more deaths in the past three years than I have my entire life. Each death brings me closer and closer to our good Lord. It makes me want to hold onto life with a bigger grip, but then again I realize no matter how hard I grip, it will never be strong enough. The Lord has his own plan that I have to trust and be willing to follow. The only thing that I can control is how I feel and how I live each day. I want to live each day to the fullest and love the people I love with more vigor and learn to always remember not to sweat the small stuff. Hopefully, I will continue to grow and learn how to always treat the people I love well, with kind words and actions. I know I can't be perfect, but why waste life stressing and getting mad over nonsense? Those of you who know me well, know that I am talking about the stress I portray when the house isn't clean, or the dogs pee inside the house, or Keith comes home late from work without calling me so I worry that he got hurt. May you all pray for my Grandma as she learns to live her new life alone for the first time in 59 years. And may my Grandpa rest in peace.


God Bless You!

Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday!

Keith was completely amazed this year at the oversight of Thanksgiving for shopping and I had a week of listening to him talk about the crazy things that stores were doing in order to compete with each other for sales. The great thing about all of the entertaining news stories was the realization at how lucky we are to not be people who need "things" to survive, but rather survives off of the love for each other and our Blessed Lord.

The Szolusha's had an amazing Thanksgiving meal prepared by Gramma Susan and were privileged with the presence of Great Grandma Goldstein. Although we took over 100 pictures, we somehow missed taking very many pictures of Axel with his wonderful relatives. I believe I am so used to taking pictures of Axel I forget that I need to take advantage of taking pictures of Axel interacting with his relatives when he is around them. Axel did have somewhat of a rough day due to the fact that he wanted to be around all of the excitement instead of taking his naps, but boy did he have fun!

Here he is rubbing his eyes around 1pm with Grandpa Brian in the process of trying to tickle the little guy.


Keith took Axel out into the "jungle" to meet Mr. Aloe Plant, but Axel wasn't too impressed.

I was trying to entice Axel to crawl, but instead he decided to look real cute and smiley like always.

Axel was having a great time with Dewey and daddy thought it would be great to see Axel in his hat.

Axel seems to be making quicker gains in the walking progression then the crawling progression this week. He is able to take up to 10 steps with support. As far as crawling is concerned he hasn't made anymore gains than the rocking on his hands and knees, scooting backwards and spinning around on his belly. Oh, well.....I hear some babies go straight to walking :)

Axel pigged out like the rest of us and ate 4 times for a total of almost 2 cups of food!!! Here he is complaining of his belly hurting after dinner.

The hit toy of the day....Gramma's wooden spoon!

Axel's new highchair that Grandpa Brian picked out for Axel's visits to Gramma's house. He obviously loved the highchair and his cool new dish, I mean box that the dish came in :)

Dewey and Auntie Shannon showing off the dogs and Axel's Christmas picture ornaments :)

last, but not least a preview of what our Christmas card might look like with our first family photo. But some of you may notice a couple of members missing.....I couldn't spoil it!

Busy times

Hi All! Just wanted to say all is well at la Casa de Szolusha. We have been really busy spending time with friends, working, riding the bike and of course playing with little Axel. I promise to post lots of photos of Turkey Day and Axel turning 8 months next Monday, but for now I leave you with a few fun photos....








Enjoy the short work week and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!!