Axel's first group birthday party and more!

I am making a habit of blogging every couple of weeks. The only bad thing about the long duration between posts is that too much happens for me to remember everything. It is going to happen one more time as the Szolusha's travel to Boston next weekend for an extended weekend, Thursday to Tuesday. I am more petrified then excited as we have never travelled for more than a couple of hours with Axel and it has never included plane flights or time changes. I believe it is the unknown and having no real control over the situation that freaks me out the most. I might join the parent club of moms and dads who can't prevent their children from screaming on the airplane and for those of you who may be on our flight I apologize in advance :) Not like anyone we know will be on the flight, but I do feel like I want to make an announcement before the plan takes off letting everyone know that we will do our best, but there our times when distraction, re-direction and reasoning just don't work for children 1 to 3 years of age.

Axel and I went to a new park that I may have mentioned last time. It is a lovely park that is well attended. Axel tends to watch other children play for 10+ minutes before diving into the fun himself. Here he is two weeks ago playing in the sand area for the first time. Last weekend was a busy one as we went to "the Jungle" for one of Axel's classmates 5 year birthday party. It was fun, but exhausting as Axel's not quite old enough to do things on his own. I had fun climbing inside the tunnels with him and daddy had fun playing some of the games with him. Axel is a male as he loves cars and trucks or anything motorized that goes fast. Here they are racing on jet ski's....sort of :) Axel was by far the youngest child and it showed when it came to eating. He wanted mommy to sit next to him as a security blanket. He did do a great job of eating his cheese less pizza without much assistance and he did a great job of consuming almost all of the birthday cake, minus the frosting. He continues to break out with bumpy, itchy rashes, especially on his legs, but there are times like these, where I think it is better for him to suffer with itchy eczema for the sake of being a normal child who eats cake like every other child, milk protein allergies or not! After the birthday party and a well needed nap, we then headed over to a friends house for a pool party. Since Axel was the only child there he was of course, the center of attention. He had an okay time in the pool, but he had a blast out of the pool. Here he is attempting to play ping pong with daddy. Auntie and Ryan came over on Sunday and Keith and I were able to get out for a bike ride. Axel once again had a great time with the two of them. On Sunday afternoon, Axel and I went over to our neighbors who decided to donate a bunch of toys they had outgrown to Axel. Here he is helping mommy sort which ones go on the toy bench, which ones go in the attic and which ones go to Goodwill. Axel has a new thing where he likes to lie down and say night,night. He will pick any blanket, towel or mat and lie his head down and pretend he is sleeping for 10-30 seconds. I think it is really cute, but I can't tell if he is really tired or is just wanting to communicate that he knows what it is. Axel's vocabulary continues to grown on a daily basis. He is really into repeating everything we say. "bike ride", "lets go", etc. His new words are hummus, helmet, home, belly, potty, poopy, pee pee, me, mine etc. He can fully communicate with words when he wants to. I have to greatly encourage him to use words when he is tired and frustrated, but overall we are amazed and happy with how well his language is developing. We were especially nervous because we have had him in a daycare that speaks primarily Spanish for over a year now. He seems to fully understand Spanish, but I have not heard him speak any words yet.

Axel has shown the first signs that he might be ready to start getting potty trained. He often points to his pee pee and then begins to pee. After he has gone number two I will ask him if Axel has poopies in his pants and he will say yes and then we go and change his diaper. I have sat him on the toilet a couple of times, which he thought was cool for a minute or two, but nothing happened. I still need to get him a little potty and see if he has any interest at all. I was given great advice from many parents that at around 1.5 years old many children show interest and can be easily potty trained. If your miss the window those same children can take another 1 to 1.5 years to become fully potty trained so I thought it wouldn't hurt to give it a try, but I won't be disappointed if it doesn't happen. I made a silly mistake the other day as I thought the box of cream of wheat was empty because daddy opened another box. I was quite surprised when I heard "uh-oh" and looked over at the little guy covered with it. Here he is looking confused.
Axel continues to love Louis. Here he is feeding Louis. You can tell, it is a love, hate relationship :)

Check back in a couple of weeks. Axel will be a whopping 18 months old. We have an appt. with the doctor in mid October because of our mini trip to Boston. We can't wait to see how much he has grown (according to the doc, that is :)).

Two weeks have come and gone in the blink of an eye. Again, I apologize for the delay in posts. Axel continues to be a charmer and is becoming more and more comfortable around strangers and new faces.

Today was the first day that Axel had a babysitter that wasn't a Grandma, Aunt or family member. He did great. Keith and I, along with a few of our friends were able to get out for a little over 2 hours on the bike. It was so refreshing to enjoy the crisp morning air on two wheels with good company. Axel did a wonderful job of showing Sarah the in and outs of playing at the Szolusha house. She said Axel was super easy to watch and that she would love to sit for Axel again. Now Keith and I have to figure out our monthly babysitting budget, although if all works out, we are going to try to have Sarah watch Axel for 2 weekend mornings and one date night per month. I sure hope it works out because it will be really nice to spend some alone time together. we love hanging out with Axel, but now that he is old enough I don't feel nearly as guilty leaving him with a highly responsible high schooler for a couple of hours :)

Axel is still working on cutting his first molars. His bottom left came in really quickly, while his two upper first molars are taking their time to fully come in. Unfortunately, the little guy woke with a cold a couple of nights ago so he is a little under the weather and continues to have 1-2 times per week where he is up for an hour or two in the middle of the night.

Axel has several new games that he has made up to entertain himself. First is the cupboard game. He like to go inside and play with the pots and pans and even jump on them in order to produce noise.

Axel's other new game is bringing the Burley out onto the grass or trying to hook it up to his bike. I bring Axel to daycare every day by Bike/Burley so I find it very amusing how much he likes it when we don't have to go to daycare or work.

Axel and I made cookies together for the first time together. He is just like his mommy and LOVES cookie dough. Here he is helping me lick the bowl clean!

One of my close friends bought Axel baby Einstein Videos for his birthday. Well I finally decided to let Axel watch one. He was really intrigued for a few minutes. As long as an animal was on the screen he would look with fascination. As soon as the animal was replaced by other images he would turn away and play with something else.
He continues to want to walk Louis.

We went to a wine tasting/bring your dog day at a local winery today and Axel did a great job of letting everyone know that Louis was his dog. He also made sure to kiss as many dogs as possible. Yesterday we went to a work function at one of my co worker's beach house. We had a blast.

There were tons of kids and dogs there as well. Here Axel is smooching with my co worker's dog.

Good thing Axel finally learned how to kiss with his mouth closed :) Don't worry he likes to kiss everyone. Here he is giving a big kiss to Auntie!
I finally remembered to bring the camera to Axel's favorite park. Daddy invented a new game of having Axel's toy car slide down the slide. As you can see from the pictures and video, Axel loved the game.


GG Goldstein made Axel his own pillow. Grandma Susan brought it last weekend when she came to visit. I should have taken a picture straight away because now he won't let me take it out of the crib. He absolutely loves it and snuggles up with it to fall asleep. I will have to somehow sneak a picture in one of these nights as I am putting him to bed! Thanks so much GG!!!

Ok...enough for now. We are all doing much better. For those of you who are interested Keith goes back to work this coming Wednesday. He has been back on the bike for almost two weeks now. Yeah for my hubby!!