Staying Afloat

We are terribly sorry about not posting in over a week. We have had a really rough transition back to work and day care. Axel had the pleasure of getting his first full blown cold. I think he caught the virus the very first day and was fully sick by Friday.

We had the privilege of having Gramma Susan in town to help out with the chaos, but she ended up leaving early upon my recommendation so that she could catch up on sleep before her week began. Gramma called on Monday of last week to thank me because she didn't realize how tired she was. She still ended up getting sick, but she was glad that she came. I actually didn't get any photos of her and Axel because we were dealing with a very fussy little guy the entire weekend. Keith and I had to take two car rides in the middle of the night to calm him. Axel also had to sleep in his car seat twice in the middle of our bed as well as with me on my pillow for three nights. The car seat helped him breath better and I think sharing my pillow with me also helped him breath as well as give him some peace that he was going to be okay. Here is a picture of him in our bed on my pillow. Keith wanted to tell you all that we bought him a big boy bed already, but I am not that funny :)


It is so hard seeing the little guy sick and unable to help himself. He absolutely hates the suction and I believe he thinks it is the most evil thing there is. Keith and I did discover Saline drops which did help decrease the congestion and aided in the suctioning of lots of slimy snot. Keith even tried sucking out the snot with his mouth over Axel's nose. He got the idea from a coworker at work. It worked equally as well as the suction, although we were given the impression that it is much more effective.

Besides Gramma Susan's visit last weekend Auntie Shannon and Uncle Ryan surprised us today with a nice visit. We all went to lunch together and then they played with Axel while I got some much needed cleaning done. Lets just say with me and Axel being sick for over a week the house is not in its usual state of cleanliness.
On top of Axel and I being sick we were "blessed" with another terribly heat wave. For two days it hit 100 degrees which means the inside of casa de Szolusha was over 90 degrees. Here is a picture of daddy and Axel trying to be happy despite the heat.


Today has been remarkably cooler and Axel and I are almost better. I am hoping that we will both be 100% in a couple of days. Although, if Axel continues to be sick I think I am going to take him to see the doctor. I noticed today that he pulled on his ear a couple of times. I have been told that is a sign of an ear infection, although he isn't running a temperature. He hasn't pulled on his ears since, so hopefully his stuffy/runny nose will go completely away and the pulling o fhis ears was incidental.

Keith has been doing well throughout this whole process. He has managed to not get sick despite sleeping only 2-6 hours of broken sleep on a regular basis. On top of not getting sick and sleeping he has still managed to race last Saturday and today and do well!!! He is truly amazing.

This past Friday I went to Babies R Us and bought Axel's next car seat as well as a fun new entertainment center. The entertainment center doubles as a walker. He might end up getting dizzy when he gets older because this walker is stationary and has the child walk around in a circle.


I bought the next car seat expecting that Axel will be 26" at his next Dr.'s appt on Oct. 2nd, which means that he will have out grown his infant car seat due to being too tall. I am also hoping that he will tip the scales with weight because he has been eating very well. I completely gave up all dairy and stopped the Zantac and he is consistently eating 33-36oz of mommy's milk every day. He still likes to snack, but he is able to eat 5 or 6 oz a couple of times per day in one sitting. He does this typically at day care or once in the morning and once at night if he is home with me all day. Typically though, he still likes to eat only 4 oz at a time and then 1 or 2 more oz about 30-60 minutes later.

Yesterday Keith and I went to the city for one of his MIT friends birthday. Here is Axel playing with his new friend Claudia. Last year at this time Claudia's mom and I were both preggo at Eileen's birthday get together and this year our children are playing together.....crazy isn't it!


Axel is still having trouble sleeping, but Keith and I are positive that once the weather stays cool and he completely heals from his cold that he will learn how to sleep well again. Last night he only got up 5 times and ate 4 of those times over the course of 12 hours. My goal is to get him to consistently be able to only get up 3 times a night and then slowly ween him to 2 times and then 1 time per night over the next couple of months.

I forgot to mention that when Gramma Susan visited Axel finally had his first meal of rice cereal. We prepared a tablespoon full and we estimated that he might have consumed half of it. I have continued to try to feed him .5-1 tablespoon every night, but it seems to me that he spits most of it out. I am hoping that he will get use to the texture and start consuming it within the next few weeks.






Sorry for jumping around so much. I was tyring to be concise, yet still remember all of the highlights of the past 10 days. Hopefully I will stay on track and be able to post later in the week. I changed my work schedule so now I will only be working three days a week instead of 4 which I think will be better on all of us.

Good night and have a great week!

Axel goes to school while Mommy goes to work

The first week back to work was hectic and long. It is amazing to think that I only "worked" 20 hours when I felt like I was gone the entire day every day. Good thing is Axel is a great child and transitioned well over the course of the week. You can see from the picture below how excited he was to go to school for the first time.


Last weekend I decided to go through Axel's clothes again and ended up washing all of his clothing that is for 6 months. He actually fits well in the 6 month onesies. I can no longer complain of the onesies being too wide and too short :)



On Wednesday before school Axel had lots of fun playing. He is getting so good at reaching for his toys.


After giving Axel his bath on Wednesday I decided to see if he was strong enough and big enough to sit in the toddler section. I am happy to say that he is finally big enough. I will have to see tomorrow how he does if I try to bathe him while he is sitting up. Maybe I will get less wet. Axel loves to kick and splash when he is reclined in the infant section. I can't imagine that he will be able to kick as well while he is sitting, but Axel is always surprising me with what he can do so i will have to let you know next time how it goes!


Here is another picture of Axel playing on his belly and demonstrating his reaching skills. It is so cool to see the eye-brain-hand connection at work.


I am not sure if you can see from the picture below but Axel is now standing just holding on to objects. I will have to get a picture of him holding onto my hands standing while Gamma is here this weekend. It is hard to believe how fast he is growing up!


Axel and Touis continue to have a love affair with each other. Touis is full of so much love even Axel can pick up on it.




Here is a picture I promised to capture last time. I love seeing Axel explore his body. Today he was grabbing his knees. Oh, so cute!


Last I leave you with Axel's second day of school, but first day being taken by daddy. Axel absolutely loves riding in the Burley. We all practiced riding to school on Sunday and then continued riding around the neighborhoods looking at houses for sale for nearly 2 hours. Axel had so much fun that he forgot about eating and went nearly 4 hours without a meal. This is starting to become a common theme where he has too much fun to concentrate on eating and Keith and I end up dealing with a little bit fussier baby at night who eats nearly 10-15 ounces before bed trying to "catch up" from the lack of milk during the day. (Wow that is quite the run on sentence, but I am too tired to change it or proof read this post).



Good night for now. Check back soon because I want to at least post a couple of cute videos that I took over the past week. Hopefully they will provide you with as much entertainment as they provided Keith and I.

Happy Baby Returns

Well after nearly a month of being "off" my cute, little, happy baby returned to me yesterday (Tuesday). Axel is finally his normal playful self. He was so tired and out of sorts for the past few weeks that he was much less physical. Today he is nearly bouncy off walls, if such a thing were possible at his age. I am quite ecstatic.

Axel and I went to the Dr. yesterday after emailing her on Monday. She increased the dose of Zantac and referred Axel to the GI specialist. We have an appt. with the GI doc on Friday to make sure nothing more serious is wrong with Axel's stomach. The decrease in food consumption was a worry to the Dr. because Axel has been dropping on the weight charts. He is currently 13 lb 6 oz and in the 14%. Good news is Axel is growing well and grew an inch in 2.5 weeks and is now a whopping 2 feet 1.25 inches and in the 54%! I might end up cancelling the appt. because it seems after increasing the Zantac he is eating better, but I will see how the rest of today and tomorrow goes before making any big decisions. I also decided to cut diary out of my diet again to see if that helps his belly. I didn't have any milk or dairy yesterday and I do believe yesterday Axel consumed 25 oz out of the bottle and nursed twice. He slept from 7:30pm-10:20, 10:30-3am, 3:15-6:15, 6:20-7:40. It was amazing!!!! I have my old baby back! I really hope it stays this way. I actually already messed up his nap schedule today because of my busy morning. Hopefully he catches up on his nap sleep by sleeping until close to 4pm today. I will just have to wait and see.

Because of Axel's increase in restful sleep he has developed more new tricks!!! Over the past couple of days Axel discovered his FEET! It is so cute to see him grab them and try to stick them in his mouth. I don't believe he will ever be successful at getting them in his mouth because I don't believe his is limber enough. Hopefully I will get a photo of this soon. Axel has also rolled over on his stomach from his back twice in the past couple of days and I discovered he can keep his head parallel to the ground if I sit him up from his back by grabbing his hands. His sitting continues to improve but he still tumbles to one side after a few seconds. The new thing about sitting is he started reaching for his toys while I help him sit and before he was confused as to what he should do while sitting :).

I have mentioned quite a few times how Axel loves watching the dogs. Well, I have been teaching Axel to "pet the dogs", and today Axel pet Louis all by himself. Luckily Keith was still home so I had him grab a few pictures before he left for work. Can you see how much he loves the dogs!!! I can't wait until he is old enough for them to really play together. You can see Louis is a little less excited than Axel, but I am sure that will change over the years. Axel also was not as chatty as he has been in the past because of being overly tired. His smiley, chatty nature has returned. I was cracking up almost crying an hour ago because Axel was laughing loudly for about 5 minutes. Of course when I grabbed the camera he stopped laughing, but I think this little video clip is still adorable.

Well, I only have two more days left of maternity leave. I will be returning to work Monday through Thursday. Axel will be at day care anywhere from 5.5 to 7 hours. Tomorrow we are going to do a test run and I am going to drop him off for 2 hours. I decided the best thing for me to do is go for a ride because I don't believe anything else will distract me enough not to cry. I may even cry on the bike, but not for long. It is hard to cry too much on the bike....it is exhausting you know?!

Okay, well I hope you all are having a good week and I hope to post again soon. If you don't see a new post by Monday I might not get to it until next Friday. I am not sure how the first week is going to go. Wish us luck!

1 Year Anniversary: Sweet or Sour?

Keith and I had a lovely day planned for our 1 year anniversary. We were going to wake up and enjoy a lovely breakfast with the little one and then go for a nice ride while a friend watched Axel and then go out for a lovely dinner at our favorite restaurant, The Pastaria, in Los Gatos. Well, lets just say that the day did not quite go as planned and the bottle of wine was left unopened.

The sour part of our Anniversary was two fold. One, Keith was still quite sick and stuck on the couch for most of the day. He was feeling better than Thursday and Friday, but still not great. He didn't even think about riding his bike, which is HIGHLY unusual. Two days off of the bike in a month is amazing let alone two days in a row! The second sour part of the weekend was our not so happy little one. I do believe his unhappiness was strictly mommy induced, but with my return to work only a week away I was desperate.

I decided it was time to let Axel self soothe. Axel has been a good nap taker since I have been trying to get him on a regular nap schedule. I would say it has almost been a month that he has been napping in his crib 3 times per day. He typically goes to bed fairly easily as well. The thing that I thought needed to change is the night wakings. Since he had the spell of loose stools and low grade fever he has been getting up 5-10 times per night. We put Axel to bed at 6:45pm on Saturday night because he was already rubbing his eyes. He easily went to sleep with being swaddled and the Binkie, but then woke at 7:30pm. We decided to feed him 3 oz and put him back to bed. He then slept until 10:30pm and woke up wanting to feed again. I then somehow managed to let him cry until nearly midnight. I then fed him again. He then woke up at 2 to eat. I put his Binkie back in and then he woke at 3am for a feeding. At 4am he woke again and then at 5am where I gave in and fed him again and finally at 6:15am when he woke I brought him into bed with Keith and I and tried to get him to go back to sleep with absolutely no luck. Lets just say that he was absolutely exhausted yesterday, Sunday, and napped surprising well. He took 3 naps, 2 one hour naps and one 2 hour nap. I then put him to bed at 5pm. He fell asleep but then woke at 5:30pm. We then let him cry until 7pm. I tried to nurse him, but he didn't want to. He did end up taking 3 oz out of a bottle that was in the fridge. After calming him down and feeding/burping him I then sat next to his crib so that he could see me. He was sleeping by 8pm without another peep. He did wake just before 11pm for a feeding and then at 1:30, 2:30, 3:30, 5 and 7. I fed him at 1:30 and 5 and put his Binkie in at 2:30 and 3:30.

So my question to all of you mom's out there. Do you think that something is bothering him at night? Do you think he is in pain? He easily goes down for all of his naps without crying. I swaddle him, put his Binkie and the mobile on and then walk away. He falls asleep after about 10 minutes without me doing anything else. Why is it so different at night? I know that the frequent night wakings are because he is so over tired and that is why I am putting him down for a nap every time I see him rubbing his eyes or yawning. I know the night wakings will get better once he catches up on sleep, but why do you think he cries so much at night? I decided tonight I am going to put him to bed at 5-5:30pm again and sit there until he falls asleep. I am hoping this will eliminate the crying because I don't think the crying it out will work for him. I think he would seriously cry FOREVER!!! A true crying champ.

Since I rarely post pictures of the "fussy" Axel I thought I should finally show you the not so happy little one. Here he is crying after daddy was trying to be funny. Note to fathers.......you are not funny when the baby is tired!!! Here are two more pictures of a tired, upset stomach from GERD, before and after shots. Can you see all of the spit up? This can happen all day long with or without the fussiness and with or without Zantac. Ok, onto the sweet part of the Anniversary. Keith and I got to spend so much time together over the past 3 days. We hardly get to spend an entire day together, let alone 3 days in a row!!! It was really nice. We also enjoyed a hardy breakfast of eggs and potatoes. Yep, I love potatoes in my eggs!!! Keith thinks I eat too much starch, but that is what fuels my 20 hour days :) For dinner we enjoyed yummy fish and chips and our anniversary cake. Keith and I demolished it in just 2 days! We are not typically cake eaters, but we are both turning into one. Keith and I prefer ice cream much more than most other sweets. We think Axel is going to as well. Here is a video clip of Axel enjoying mommy's ice cream almost more than mommy!!!

Here are a couple more pictures of the little guy trying to consume what mommy and daddy are eating and drinking. The weekend ended on another sad note. I received a phone call while I was on my bike Sunday evening (trying to clear my head from my crying child) that a coworker of mine pasted away. Rosalie was a wonderful women. She had just retired a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with cancer shortly after. Everyone thought she was doing quite well and we are all shocked that God decided to take her so soon. Rosalie brought inspiration to many of us "young" ones. She taught us how to live each day to the fullest. She also had an amazing talent of putting a smile on everyones face she came into contact with. She will be truly missed. I leave you with a picture that sums up how Axel and I feel right now and we wish that the warm hand of God comforts all of those who are mourning the loss of Rosalie.

Summer turns to Winter

The Flying Pumpkin Returns - After much complaining of the repeated heat waves I am happy to say that unseasonably cool, overcast, and cloudy weather has returned to Silicon Valley. Here is Axel dressed up to go for a walk in the wet cool air. Luckily it warmed up quickly and the hat became a bit too much. I absolutely love weather in the 60's and 70's. Keith was initially enjoying the cool weather as well until he caught the chills and the stomach bug a couple of days ago. He currently is lying on the couch feeling awful hoping he will be better for our 1 year Anniversary tomorrow. I pick up a replica of the top layer of our wedding cake in an hour, so I am looking foward to enjoying some tastey cake tomorrow. Hopefully Keith will be able to enjoy some as well. If not, more for me!!! (shhhh......I know that sounds awful).

- the following from Daddy K Axel joined Mommy and Daddy at the Timpani Criterium on Sunday. He had a lot of fun with Daddy sitting on a grassy hill and cheering for Mommy while she tore up the women's race with her teammates. In just four months after giving birth, Brianne returned to the podium by making the final break, helping drive the break, winning a prime sprint and then finishing 3rd by just a hair! Keith and Axel were so excited. Partway through the race, Axel got the screams and he needed to be fed, burped, changed, and then rocked to sleep without distracting his mommy who was busy having a great race. With the help of a few of Brianne's Los Gatos club mates Daddy was able to do all of that and be ready to jump on his bike to race immediately after the women's race. Mommy's race was so inspiring to us - we were really excited! Here's a picture of Mommy in the break and then almost winning in the sprint. SO CLOSE! Can you see the finish line? Brianne woke up in the middle of the night and exclaimed 'Shoot, I should have won - SO CLOSE!' Now I see what she means by so close.
Dad was able to race hard without a real warmup again. His hour ride in the am loosened up his legs after the 100+ mile disctrict championship road race the previous day. There are no cool pictures, but Daddy was happy to make the final selection, hang in there and roll in for 20th after making it to the 10th and final climb. Timpani Crit resulted in 23rd place, no crashes and lots of fun trying to get away in the early laps. Mom's inspiring ride just before the race was enough to get Dad trying to move up for the sprint in the end, but plans of a top finish were spoiled by squaring one of the many cones on the course following crazy wheels with just over a lap to go. He's happy to be in one piece still. After the race, we distributed some of our GIANT tomatoes from our ballooning tomato garden. We'll have to add some pics next blog. We don't know what to do with all of the tomatoes and Louis and Touis can only eat so many. -k

This past weekend was filled with baby tricks. Axel has a couple of new tricks that I wanted to mention. He can now put his Binkie in all by himself. He did it 3 times at our race on Sunday and yesterday when we went to visit the day care center he did it again. I think this is a great step because once he is able to put his Binkie in he may be able to sooth himself at night, which means less night wakings for me! The only downfall is right now he needs to have the Binkie attached to him to perform this trick and that is not wise to do at night because of the possibility of choking. I will try to get a video of this in the next week or so and post it. You can kind of get a feeling of what his little brain is going through with the video below. I took this video over a week ago of him grabbing Mr. Monkey's legs and putting them in his mouth. He is much more skilled at it now, although you can still see the little wheels in his brain working pretty hard to put all of these tasks together.



Axel has also rolled from his back to his stomach a couple of times over the past few days. He rolls easily from his stomach to his back in both directions and he easily rolls onto both sides from his back. He is able to sit for a few seconds with his hands supporting him before he teeters off to one side. Unfortunately, he hasn't been working very much on the scooting because he continues to get frustrated when left on his stomach. I was quite clever yesterday and decided to place the Binkie a few inches infront of him while he was on his stomach. He then made a brillant move scooting up towards the Binkie with his mouth wide open and then dove for the Binkie. Success! Binkie in mouth. I typically only let Axel have the Binkie at night but lately he has been needing it quite a bit during the day. Yesterday Axel only had 14 oz of milk all day. His gums have been a bit more swollen and red and Axel was up every 2 hours again last night and wouldn't go back to bed until I fed him. He also has been extra fussy and the teething tablets do appear to make him feel better atleast temporarily. If he doesn't intake much milk over the next few days I suspect that we will be posting a picture of his first tooth in the next week. If he increases his milk intake than it was just another false alarm. I feel so bad for the little guy. Good thing babies don't have much of a memory. It would be awful for him to remember being in pain so much of his first few months of life! Axel also seems to be taking more and more interest in what Keith and I are eating. He gets really excited to watch me eat. I continue to try to put the baby spoon in his mouth, but he still doesn't care for it. I plan on trying rice cereal by the end of the month. I will wait until he is back to eating a normal amount for a few days though. I thought this picture below was really cute. Do you think Axel is looking at his milk or the nachos? Hope you all have a great weekend!

Axel is 4 months old!!!

Yesterday, Friday, Axel officially turned 4 months. It is amazing how much our lives have changed, yet it seems hard to remember life without the little guy. As Keith said last night while Axel and I were watching him water the garden, "You do know that this was my dream. All I wanted was a wife, children, a dog or two and house with a garden." It is funny how simple my husband is. I have always thought of myself as a simple, low maintenance kind of gal, but I always dreamed of travelling and seeing the world. Keith is right though, my family makes me complete. People make me complete. As much as the world has to offer, it would really be nothing without the people we love along the way.

Ok, enough with the sentimental thoughts. On Wednesday I forgot to mention that Axel's high chair came in. It took me a few weeks of research to decide on what I thought would be best for him and most economincal. I am pleased to say that so far I absolutely love the Anka by Svan High Chair. It grows with the child and is the exact height of our table which will allow us to use it as a booster chair until Axel is 50 lbs. It is the cutest high chair I have ever seen. We tried it out as soon as it arrived. I think Axel liked it. I have yet to use it again, because the Dr. said that I should wait to feed Axel solids. I don't want him to get confused with playing in the high chair. I want him to know that being in the high chair means meal time, which excludes eating toys :)


I put on another outfit that I thought worth mentioning. I find it funny how they design onesies that are short and wide but pants that are super long. How can a baby be fat and have long legs? the great thing about this outfit is it has a matching bib and a little doggie tail on the butt :) It also reminded me of the 80's with the little built in leg warmers.



Axel has also been spontaneously holding his bottle a couple of times per day. He doesn't seem strong enough when the bottle is full but by the time the bottle only has an ounce or two he happily takes over.

Axel is also exploring objects more and more. He loves to see how things work. For example, any ceiling fan or chandelier really grabs his attention. You can see from the picture below how he loves exploring the details of his car seat :)

The Dr. suggested that we treat Axel's ichthyosis on his scalp like cradle cap. So every day for the past three days I have been applying mineral oil for one hour and then washing it off with Cetaphil and a baby brush. I do believe it is working to get the current dry skin off, but I am not sure if it will help new scales from drying up and flaking off. The difficult part about treating his scalp with the mineral oil is preventing him from touching it and then putting his hands in his mouth. Mineral oil is used for bedridden older adults as a laxative. Oral use of mineral oil is strongly discouraged in infants. Shouldn't they put two and two together and realize that the chances of an infant ingesting mineral oil goes up a thousand times by prescribing it for topical use? Anyways, the picture below shows the only thing that I could think of to prevent him from touching the oil. I think it reminds me of the old Aunt Jemima commercials.

I have been looking at this little cow outfit for a couple of months hoping Axel would have the opportunity to wear it. Unfortunately, the weather has been a little too hot. I finally decided we better try it on because it is a 0-3 month old outfit that he will likely grow out of in the next couple of weeks. This is the downfall about prewashing baby clothes before they wear it....they may never get the opportunity to actually wear it.


I have also been eyeing this little Calvin Klein overall outfit that I thought was too big for him. It is a 3-6 month outfit. Luckily after washing it shrunk to the perfect size. I am hoping Axel will get to wear this outfit a few more times before the weather cools down. I think he looks abslutely adorable in it. You can see Axel giving the "Texas Longhorn sign" in the picture below. He is already too "cool", but we're not sure how he chose his team.


Alrightly, time to get this posted before the little guy wakes up. After two days of sleeping well and only waking 4 times per night he is back to having a lot of trouble sleeping. He was up until 12:30 in the morning trying to fall asleep last night (Saturday). He also spit up a ton this morning. So much for his belly getting better. I am going to give the medication one more week and then email the Dr. on what we can do next. I only have two weeks until I go back to work so I would really like him to be getting up 2-3 times a night and not having these long 1-2 hours of wakefulness/fussiness that he is currently having.