Axel's first Truck and more!

Axel has had a great week of growth and discoveries! He is understanding more and becoming more playful. With Axel turning 1 in just a few days we are busily preparing for his first birthday party. Keith is wrapping birthday presents as I write this blog. We are so excited that we actually bought Axel his first gifts. It was hard to not buy Axel any Christmas gifts, so we went a little over board with the birthday gifts. I can't say until our next post what Axel's gifts are, but I am sure we will have pictures after his birthday party next Saturday.

Gifts from Gramma and Granpa Burgess and Great Gramma and Granpa Eick have already arrived. We are wrapping those gifts as well, but silly mommy decided to open the boxes in front of little Axel. Not realizing that the gifts weren't wrapped resulted in Axel playing with his first truck a week before his birthday. I couldn't hide the truck after seeing Axel's eyes light up with excitement. Luckily I was able to grab the camera and catch his excitement on film, hence the picture above. I was going to include a video as well, but I have a couple of other videos I wanted to include instead.

Axel continues to make gains physically. He is walking better needing less assistance. He is also starting to get more confident and is practicing letting go and taking short distances solo. He still gets frustrated and cries at times, but Keith and I are trying to be a little more tough on him by helping him figure it out without intervening. I still help out too much, but I am learning :) With that said Axel started crawling sometimes. Typically, it is only if he wants to stand up right away, but occasionally like in this short video below he will crawl to his destination and then flop on his belly.

It appears that Axel is getting his first top tooth, but we are not 100% sure when it will make its final debut. We will see the white gums and then it will retreat for a day and then we will see it again. You can kind of see in the picture below his right upper gums sticking out below his lips.
Axel also started wearing 12 month clothing. It's a bit big, but I didn't want the winter/spring 12 month clothing to go to waste :) Here is his first cute outfit that we received from Keith's Aunt. Oh, sooo cute. Thanks Aunt June! Please ignore our dirty floors. I only clean them once a week :)
Keith and I also finally decided to give Axel's room some character. Axel has been in his own room since 6 months old, but we weren't sure when we would be moving so we didn't do a thing! Since Axel has become quite aware of his surroundings I thought it was time to give the poor child something to look at. So here it is......its a start!
With presents come boxes and now that Axel is older he loves to play with and in boxes. You can see how much fun he was having.


This morning I was able to get out on a ride with some of my teammates. When I got home Axel was wearing the outfit in the video below....Keith wanted to ensure me that we could change his pants if we went anywhere in case I wanted Axel to look "cute". I think the video is hilarious. It is a little long and slow at first, but if you have time to watch the entire minute and a half you can see why my heart swells with love for this little Angel of mine.

Axel and I are going for his one year checkup and his first "professional" pictures on Thursday so check back in for his new stats and pictures!

Last, I leave you with this picture.....where Axel is saying....I am ohhhh soooo bigggg......and cute :)

Hand Foot Mouth Disease

Another week with another illness in the Szolusha household. Axel has been quite under the weather the past few days dealing with a high fever and horrible rash. Luckily, the fever is a thing of the past and now the remnants of this virus are left in the form of a horrible and itchy rash.....You can see from this photo below what the rash looks like if you look closely at Axel's right hand/arm. For something that is suppose to stay in the Hand, Foot and Mouth region, it is also all over Axel's diaper region and legs. The rash has almost completely scabbed over and our happy baby has returned!

Axel continues to look more and more like a little boy and less and less like a baby.

He loves to play with magnets and he can entertain himself for easily 30 minutes at a time. The perfect amount of time to prepare dinner! If the magnets don't do the trick, Axel will spend that time exploring the cabinets and removing as much as possible from them. Luckily this week I taught him the concept of putting things inside of other objects. He had a blast putting Cheerios inside a little plastic box and then taking them out and eating them. You can see this in the video below. The amazing thing is not this video, but that this morning Axel put his toys in the doggy box. I couldn't believed he remembered the concept. Hopefully, he will grow to love "clean up time" just as much as mommy does :)

Axel continues to want assistance to walk and tends to cry for help. We are hoping he will get over this phase soon. We are hoping that by having him play in the grass and to learn that it doesn't hurt to fall will help him along in this process.

I am not sure if I hindered him or if being under the weather a couple of times over the past month has set him back in the walking department. He was much braver before and took quite a few steps independently. Oh well, I know in due time when he is ready he will master this milestone :)

Speaking of being sick, Keith is still struggling to get better. He thought he was feeling better after starting antibiotics on Monday, but that was short lived and he is feeling worse again. Hopefully, with a few other diagnostics and Dr. appt's they will figure out what the source of is ailment is and solve it. Please keep him in your prayers!

Axel has hit his "12 month" milestone of becoming more aware of his surroundings by deciding that he doesn't want to take naps or go to bed at night. It has been a little challenging because of him being sick. It is hard to figure out when I need to comfort him (because of him not feeling well) and when he needs to relearn how to put himself back to sleep. Sleep retraining started again last night and was a success. The 50 minutes of crying before bed last night equated to his usual one night waking for a bottle and the rest of the night Axel sleeping or putting himself back to sleep. Unfortunately, we also had to do that today with nap time. He cried another 40 minutes when I put him down for his afternoon nap, although he only cried 10 minutes for daddy this morning. Hopefully, Axel will be fully retrained within a few days :)

Here is a video of Axel talking today. Keith and I loved his babble. We hope you enjoy it too! Have a great week!

What's up Doc?

Axel continues to explore and learn about his surroundings. He is such a cute investigator. You will see from the dozen or so pictures how much he likes to explore his surroundings! I took a ton of videos this week, but decided to just add the photos so I am terribly sorry there are no videos included in this bloG :)

Here is Axel checking out the box one of his toys came in.

Here is Axel playing in the doggy box. This is where he found the old pink leather dog collar that I showed last week. He loves to carry it around and chew on it.

Axel looking outside....one of his favorite things to do.

Axel trying to go through the doggy door.


Axel finally was strong enough to pull the dominos off of the shelf on our bookcase. He was very excited to discover more teething toys. The dominos are now put away so that the pieces don't magically disappear. Not that Axel would loose them, but anything left on the floor becomes a dog toy and is brought outside! (Bad Louis and Touis :)- )



Axel discovering rocks outside...don't worry I didn't let him eat the rock, but I did let him feel the texture on his tongue! Boys will be boys!




Last I leave you with a demonstration as to why Axel is having trouble learning to walk independently. It is really cute, but after nearly 2 months of this I am a little tired of him crying for mommy's hand instead of just trying or attempting to walk the two feet by himself. Day care thinks it is really funny how scared he is too. This is how it is most days, but once or twice a week he is overly confident and attempts walking by himself all day long. He is actually pretty steady on his feet for about 10 steps or so.
Step 1....Axel cruising along happily!

Step 2.....Axel deciding he doesn't want to cruise the couch, but instead reaches his hand out for assistance.

Step 3....Mommy giving in as Axel starts to cry!

Axel happily walking hand in hand with mommy!


We are still trying to stay afloat. Both Keith and I are feeling better, but still not 100%. Axel's skin is getting better. We are using 2.5% hydrocortisone now which has drastically helped his inflamed skin from the eczema. We are applying this twice a day and the Aquaphor 3 times per day. He appears to be more comfortable and less itchy so we are all happy about that.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Axel is now using the sippy cup 90% of the time. I still give him a bottle if he wakes at night to eat. He slept 12 hours straight two nights in a row, then 10 hours the third night, but is back to 7-8 hours with the need of a bottle. He typically sleeps another 3-4 hours before waking for the day.

I also wanted to mention that his naps have been pretty inconsistent and chaotic over the past couple of weeks. I think it is because he is in a developmental milestone and hopefully, he will get back into a good nap routine shortly. Let's all pray that he masters walking over the next month so we can all sleep and play better!!!!

Have a great week!

Got Milk? I mean Got Soy?

(Axel's new favorite toy....old dog collar and daddy's dog bitten sliders)

With the turning of another month came lots of changes for Axel. He seems so much more aware of his surroundings it is scary at times....literally. For example, the other night when I was feeding Axel he noticed the shadows we were reflecting onto the walls and stopped drinking his milk in order to see who or what was beside him. It took all my effort not to laugh.

Keith and I also tried to spice up Axel's room since his room and walls have been pretty barren up to this point. We finally reattached the blinds over one of his windows and put up three posters and his name on the wall. Axel received a set of nice wooden letters (A X E L) ,of course, for Christmas from his Aunt Josie and Uncle Ted. It feels good to have them off of the mantle in the living room and finally on his wall where it belongs.

We had a rough week of sleep. I am still not sure what the issue was, but it seems to be past us now. I wasn't sure if he was hitting a physical and mental developmental milestone or if he was sick. He was projectile vomiting a few times, typically in the evening after his bedtime bottle or his late night feeding. I was having to lie next to his crib for hours to get him to fall back to sleep because he didn't want to be held. He would squirm around in my arms. I am convinced now that we visited the allergist that it is Axel's milk allergy that was causing the stomach discomfort and projectile vomiting.

Here is a cute video of Axel moving around in a circle on his butt playing with his second favorite new toys (foam alphabet)

Axel's food intact drastically went down over the past two weeks as well, which I now correlate to an upset stomach. The great thing about Axel taking the allergy tests are that we know he is not allergic to anything else and his skin/eczema has greatly improved over the past four days since he has been on soy. The reason why we are just discovering this now is because Axel has only been on 100% formula for 5 weeks. We were using a milk based, lactose free formula, but it is the actual milk, or protein in the milk that he is allergic to. After looking at tons of different soy milks and comparing them to soy based formula I have decided to have Axel on soy milk since he is able to get all of the same nutrients with less sugar. It is exciting to think he is one step closer to becoming a toddler without the need of formula!

Auntie Shannon and Ryan were kind enough to come and help out with Axel today. They had a blast with Axel, while Keith and I were able to start going through all of our excess "stuff" and make a trip to Good Will.


Axel and Auntie shaking it up :)

It felt so good to actually get things accomplished. (Thanks again Shannon and Ryan you two are AWESOME.) With Keith and I being sick and run down for so long we were happy to feel well enough to actually do something. We have been struggling with the huge adjustment of not riding the bike, but rather just trying to stay afloat with our daily tasks and taking care of Axel. We hope to find a happy median were we can still ride some and still have time to spend as a family. The realization that our days of competitively racing may be behind us has been hard. I am sure we will get out and do a few races for fun, but nothing where we have to train hours and hours for. Don't get me wrong, we are definitely excited for the future and all of the fun adventures we have in store with Axel, we are just trying to change our mind set to being "recreational" cyclist :)

Axel and I will be visiting the dermatologist again this week to see if we can't help his very itchy skin. Although it has improved drastically since we stopped milk based products he is still always itching his skin and I still think it effects his sleep at times so hopefully we will have a better solution by the end of the week :)

Have a great week!