Our little walker

The Szolushas have had a wonderful week. Axel transitioned wonderfully back to day care. With a couple of key modifications Axel is now taking two, 1+ hour naps at day care. They finally put Axel's pack n play in the bedroom with a heater running for white noise. With Axel no longer getting overly tired he is continuing to be more and more active. He is starting to get hard to keep up with. He has mastered the scooting thing and can scoot quite quickly around the house. So much so if I leave him for a second I will find him pulling on a cord or going to his two favorite places, the dog bowls and the dog door. I can't figure out why Axel likes playing with the dog bowls, putting his hand in the dog bowl filled with water and playing/trying to eat the dog food during dinner time, but he consistently does the same thing every night. During the day he is fascinated with the doggy door and my book shelf, as well as the bottom of the refrigerator and our floor heaters. Axel sure is an investigator. Auntie Shannon and Ryan stopped by on Saturday to bring Christmas gifts they purchased from their Australia trip. Axel likes his rattle but he plays with the box it came in even more. You can see here he went right for the box after opening it! Keith and I got a very cool wine holder that was hand painted. Since our Italy trip, 3years ago, Keith and I have become quite the wine drinkers (a whole 10-12 bottles a year :) which is a lot for us) Shannon also brought gifts from Grandpa Brian. Now all three of our boys have their own new foot. However, despite them each having a foot of their own, they still all want to play and chew on the same one. Good thing Axel thinks its fun, although Louis and Touis get a little frustrated. Now onto the title of today's blog. Keith and I finally made time to take a video of Axel walking. We went outside because we have had several comments from our friends and relatives that our videos are too dark because of our poorly lit house.
I was also able to take a few videos of Axel cruising along the coffee table today. Here is the best one.

It was hard to take because Axel has no fear and sometimes he gets ahead of himself. Our coffee table has very hard edges and I am just dreading the day that I hear a clunk. I still let Axel fall but I always catch him so that he has a soft landing. I am trying to teach him by saying "Axel go boom", but he doesn't seem to quite get it. If I see he is going to fall directly on his butt I let him. Keith and I are both praying that Axel will start to have more self preservation instincts soon because otherwise we are going to be really old in a few years due to worrying about our little guy getting hurt!

Axel's 9 month check up was today. The bummer news is he only weighed 17 lbs 2 oz. which puts him at the 5th percentile, but the good news is his height of 27.5 inches is the 22nd%ile. We also found out that Axel is a little anemic so we will be enforcing more oatmeal and rice cereal until he is fully transitioned to formula. Axel loves fruits and veggies so much I often forget to mix them with cereal, but now we really have to, at least for the next month. Most likely within 4-6 weeks my freezer full of breast milk will be gone and I am on my last few days of pumping. I am a bit sad to stop providing for Axel, but at the same time I am really ready to be done with the whole nursing/pumping thing.

Keith and I both decided for our next child we will wait much longer before transitioning him or her to a bottle in order to reduce the amount of pumping. I have spent 1-3 hours a day pumping over the past 9 months on top of the hours of nursing for the first 5 months. That is a lot of hours if you ask me. No more Internet surfing for me! I will no longer have an excuse to sit in front of the computer for 20 minutes at a time throughout the day...... thank goodness! Anyway, the Szolushas have a low key weekend ahead of family time and bike riding. Hopefully something exciting will happen so I have something to write about next week!