Axel turns 11 months!

It is a beautiful sunny day in California. We can't believe Axel is 11 months old and that the next month posting will be Axel's first Birthday. It is amazing how quickly time has gone and we continue to try to enjoy each moment to the fullest. It has been a little hard with all of us being sick off and on for the past few months, but we do our best to stay positive.


This post will mostly be photos because Keith took so many great photos of Axel today. As far as where Axel is on milestones the pictures pretty much sum it up. He is getting better and better at being on his feet. He continues to want to stand and walk everywhere ALL of the time. He continues to get frustrated when he is on his belly, but now he has really mastered standing up. Good thing for him but bad for us because in a split second he can go from belly to standing and start to take off whether his feet are cooperating or not :). Hopefully, Axel will become steadier on his feet sooner than later so we don't have to worry about him hitting his head so much.

One funny, but not so funny thing that has changed over the past couple of weeks is Axel has become a picky eater. We can't tell if it is because he is in pain, if it is because of his current cold or if he just decided he only likes fruit and hard food like cherrios and crackers. I am hoping he will resume his old eating habits soon otherwise I forsee some major food battles between the little guy and myself :)

Axel continues to explore. Here he is trying to open the drawer. Lucky for us our drawers are difficult for us to open so we don't have to worry about Axel opening the drawers anytime soon :)

Axel splashing the dog bowl.

Axel's new favorite toys, the foam alphabet Grandma and Grandpa Burgess got him.
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Axel's growing teeth.









A tired Axel ready for his nap :)

Have a great week!

Axel's first tooth and more!

Well, I was hoping to have posted this on Monday, but the holiday weekend got away from us. This past Saturday Keith and I noticed Axel's first tooth pushing through his gums. Yep, that is right, it only took 10.5 months for the bottom front left tooth to begin to emerge. It is the cutest little tooth at just a few millimeters. The bottom right front tooth is also making its way through the gums. It is about a week behind the left. From what Keith and I hear it takes about a month for the entire tooth to emerge. I tried my best to take advantage of Axel crying to give you all a glimpse of the first two teeth. It is times like these that I think I am a bad mother :), but sometimes getting the memory on film is more important than Axel crying out of frustration (sorry Axel). Besides Axel's first tooth Axel also received his first bike! Grammy Goodrow sent it to Axel for Valentine's Day. He absolutely loves it. Here are a few pictures of him with it. Here is a picture of him frustrated. I am hoping he will catch on quickly at how to maneuver it around furniture. I also have two videos. One of him on it and the other of him pushing it. The funny thing about him on it is that his legs don't quite touch so he is only able to go backwards by using his tippy toes. As you can tell from the video I was extremely excited at how brilliant Axel was to figure out to push it even if it was the wrong direction :)


Axel also experienced his first diaper rash the past few days. I am still amazed at how bad diaper rash can get and what it actually looks like. The poor guy had blood on his diaper. Luckily, he is healing quickly and day care is finally able to change him more than 3 times per day! For those of you who haven't experienced this yet, the remedy that has worked best for us is using Vaseline over the affected area along with his typical cloth diaper. It is important to put a thick layer of Vaseline and to make sure the diaper is donned loosely. I have also been letting Axel play naked for about 10 minutes between changes. It is not practical to let him run around naked as we have hardwood floors and I don't think sliding his pee pee on the floor would feel very good. However, if Axel could walk independently or crawl on his hands and knees I would definitely consider an hour or two a day of naked play to really allow the rash to heal. We tried the Destin, but I think Axel is allergic to it because it was after I used it about 3 times that the rash got really bad.

Axel continues to love the dogs. He attempts to do everything they do. I let him play outside in the grass. He wanted to eat the grass, leaves, dirt and branches just like them. Here is a cute picture of Axel holding a small branch that the dogs play tug of war with. Last I leave you with a couple of cute pictures of the little guy.
Oh, Keith and I had a wonderful weekend. Keith surprised me for Valentine's Day by cleaning the house and buying a little sparkling apple cider and mini heart chocolate cake. It was a wonderful day. There is nothing like a gift of cleanly mopped floors.....especially if you all know that I once was a clean freak.....but life with two dogs and two boys doesn't allow much time for a sparkling clean house. Thanks sweetie for making me feel so special!

Air Axel

Axel appears to be growing cuter and cuter by the day. Keith and I have had so much fun with him we are looking forward to seeing how Axel's personality continues to blossom and grow.

Life has been pretty low key the past week and a half. Axel did venture to his first bike race of the year with daddy and myself. He had an amazing time. It is hard for me to believe he is such a social butterfly. It doesn't matter if you are dog or human or nature for that matter....Axel loves them all. Here is a cute picture of Axel being kissed by Sophie, one of my teammates dog.
Axel went around all day opening his mouth waiting to be kissed by every dog he saw. He does it all of the time now at home too, but Louis and touis seem to only want to kiss everything but Axel's mouth :)
We were blessed with a beautiful day in Napa on Sunday and enjoyed hanging out with all of our cycling friends and then listening to the remainder of the super bowl on the way home.

Axel has had tons of milestones the past couple of weeks. He is now getting up on his own from low surfaces. He still needs reminders to bring his knees under him when he is trying to pull himself up to standing when using higher surfaces. He is consistently walking 5 step independently before falling forward. He is also trying to feed himself more and more. Here is a couple of pictures of his first attempts a couple of weeks ago. Now when I assist him he is able to bring the spoon or fork to his mouth without the desire to toss it everywhere :) Although he still has moments where he enjoys playing with his food! Axel still loves the radio flyer wagon we bought him, but unfortunately for us he wants to ride in it more than push it. I put him in it when I was in a bind about a week ago and now every time he sees it he drapes his arms over the medal bar and cries until I put him in it. Good thing is I don't have to worry about him falling, but bad thing is I am the one getting the exercise rather than him:) Axel did manage to stand up in it when I left him in it in the kitchen while I was preparing his breakfast. Luckily he was right next to me so I was able to get him before he attempted to move.

Axel continues to like to explore. I left him in the living room while I was throwing something away, In a matter of one minute he managed to disappear although I could still hear him clunking (his tongue) away. After searching for him I found him between the coffee table and couch. I still am not sure what he was trying to do, but it was awfully cute! So I am sure you are wondering why I named the blog "air Axel". Well, Axel has been doing this new thing the past couple of weeks of biting his tongue or sticking his tongue out with everything that he does. It is super cute. I always think of Michael Jordan with the tongue out during technical shots. You never know, maybe Axel is preparing himself to be the next Jordan in the baby world :) (for those of you who don't know I grew up in Chicagoland and I was privileged to be able to go to a handful of games with my parents during the years when the Bulls dominated the sport :)) Axel still loves the nesting blocks that Grammy Goodrow bought him. He now tries to drink from them hoping something comes out. After 20 times you would think that he would get it, but it has been days now! I think he is super excited to have mastered his sippy cup! I know we are. It is our goal to get him off the bottle and on the sippy cup 100% of the time within the next month or two. Wish us luck! I also wanted to show that Axel has shown some form of reasoning skills. He now lifts the blinds to see out the window instead of bending over. He also uses the bottom of the blinds to itch his scalp. If you look closely you can see his hair sticking up after getting some good scalp scratching in :) The last two things that have been really exciting achievements the past few days is Axel can now clap and wave good bye. He has only done the wave a couple of times without prompting when I say "adios" as I leave him at daycare, but the clapping he is doing consistently the past couple of days. Here is a video of him clapping.

New tricks at 10 months of age!!!!

Axel happily turned 10 months this past Sunday, the 31st of January. He is as cute as ever. We took over 100 pictures the past week so this post will be mostly pictures and hopefully a few videos if I am able to download them all. The big accomplishment the past week is Axel is finally able to pull himself up to standing. Yeah!!!!! But.....he needs some assistance in getting starting. All I have to do is bring his knee under him and then he is able to do the rest. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get a good vidoe because Axel was ready for his nap. In the video below he needed a little more assistance and encouragement then he typically needs. I am hoping by the end of this week he will have learned that bringing his knees under him will allow him to get up completely on his own. As you can see from the video he doesn't use much brain power, but does what most of us Burgesses have done with physical taskes.....and that is "muscle it" with bruit force:) I taught him to bring one leg forward and to put one foot flat on the floor in order to help stand, but he rather just dig his little feet into the ground and muscle it up. It is super cute that he often bites the surface he is using to lift himself up as if he is getting extra strength from his jaw.
The other big accomplishment this week is that Axel is finally able to drink from his sippy cup independently. I often have to say "up" for him to remember to tilt his head back in order to consume the water instead of just the air, but I am positive he will have this down pat in the next few days as well. Keith taught Axel how to feed him this past week as well. Here is a cute video of the two of them. I hope Axel will always be as generous as he is with his Cherrios here :)

Oh, Axel had another big accomplishment this week. He finally gets the concept of putting things inside each other. Grammy Goodrow bought Axel cool nesting and stacking blocks for Christmas that he absolutely loves. They entertained him for over 30 minutes the first day I gave them to him. Let's just say Keith was grateful for the gourmet dinner I was able to prepare because of those blocks :) Axel is still completely intrigued by the dogs. He appeared to want to help walk the dogs on Sunday so we were glad to have him give it a try. He managed to help walk Louis to the end of the drive way :) Everyone keeps saying that Axel is looking more like me, but from this picture I think Axel looks a lot like his daddy. Their eyes are almost identical except for the color! We finally took the opportunity to get a naked walking photo. What is cuter than a baby walking or running away from mommy and daddy naked? Axel still loves taking a bath. Grandma Susan sent him his first bath toys. Hopefully, we will remember to buy him more bath toys because I am sure these blinking rubber duckies will get old quickly, but he sures loves them for now! We also received the radio flyer baby walker I ordered today. We were so excited to have Axel try it out we had him stay up later than usual until Keith finished putting it together. Let's just say he absolutely LOVED it. I think Keith and I were almost having more fun than Axel. We only had one close call were Axel was trying to back up, but accidentally let go of the walker. Luckily I caught him which made him giggle even more.
Have a great week!