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!