Demolition

Well, Father's day came and went in a blur. Keith and I went for a ride together that was cut short by my wheel breaking and then we spent the rest of the day together in the backyard. We started our big project of demolishing our back yard.

Now, 9 days later we no longer have any brick (-5000 or so) or our big deck. Every night Keith and I worked 1-2 hours after work and my 4 days off this past weekend I put in 4 hours of hard labor each day.

God blessed me and Axel with 3 days of nearly 3 hour naps which allowed me to get so much work done. The other hours Axel helped me by picking up the hundreds of screws I unscrewed from the deck. He would place them in his bucket or "special box". He would also tell me if I missed one or say "careful mommy" when it looked like I was struggling to get one out.

We ended the week of fun labor by making a party of it. We had a handful of friends over to help us finish the final demolition of Axel's old playhouse and the hauling of the rest of the brick Keith and I weren't able to bring to the front yard. We were so excited last night to finish. We treated our friends and awesome neighbors to huge burritos, beer, cake and ice cream and they all had the pleasure of embarrassing me by singing happy birthday. Keith and I feel so blessed to have friends and neighbors care about us enough to help us do hard work!!! The good thing about us getting done is we found out the paver guy messed up his start date and has us scheduled a day early!!! That means they are starting tomorrow and our new patio and walkways will be done by Friday!!! Our lawn and irrigation guy is also going to come by tomorrow night and work through part of the weekend so that he can finish up his work by July 10th so that we can throw Keith a 35th and 36th birthday party (since he was out of commission last year) to the friends who labored to help us with the yard! I can't wait to buy Keith's new grill and start our monthly BBQ's this summer.

So, on to Axel. Axel has been such a trooper. He has grown up so much in the sense that he deals with change very well. I have been explaining to him that we are redoing the back yard so when it came time to actually get rid of the deck, brick and playhouse not even one cry was let out. Now there were tears that mommy was too busy to play with him, but I solved that by getting our neighbor to watch and play with him when he started bugging me non stop to "come here".

Speaking of neighbor, Axel absolutely adores his new sitter. We have been using Annika for 2 or 3 months now and he has grown very fond of her. We make almost daily trips to her house (2 houses down) to see if she is home. The great thing is she loves him too, so if she is not home when we go visit she will come over and say hello to him, even when she isn't scheduled to watch him. We are soooo lucky to have her. The greatest thing is she has all 4 years of high school so Axel getting attached to her isn't a bad thing!!!! She also just went to a weekend of more babysitter training so now she feels more comfortable with infants and is infant CPR certified. Now all we have to do is make an infant for her to watch :)

Other cool new things that Axel has done/achieved the past two weeks are.....1. He has ate entire 1/2 sandwiches, both turkey and egg
2. He has consumed his first rice dream ice cream cone

3.He can count to 12
4. He can sing his abc's (minus EFG and LMNOP is a big mumble) but all of the other letters he articulates quite well :)
5. He has trained the neighbor's cat, cuddles, to lie down for him as he pets her.

6. His climbing skills continue to improve, although his height still is a limiting factor.

7. He met and played with a bird at Whole foods

8. He continues to climb through the doggy gate

and door, but now that he is getting bigger it takes him a little more thought. Here he is stuck half way as he was trying to back into the house after going half way through and realized he shoulders were too wide. "Axel stuck mommy"


9. Axel still loves Louis. He always asks, "Mommy can I play with Louis?, " or, "Can I play in Louis' room?"


10. He continues to love bubbles!

11.And finally Axel is still really itchy. He doesn't seem even close to growing out of his dairy allergy or his eczema.

Have a great week. Make sure to check back in a couple weeks for pictures of our new yard!!!!

Home

Axel loves being home. I think he is going to be a lot like his parents in that sense. We are just people who love spending time at home, whether that includes playing games, having people over, or cooking dinner. Life is good when you can lounge and do what you want to do when you want to do it. It is for similar reasons I think Axel loves being at home. "I want to play with Louis mommy." "I want to go outside, mommy." Axel go to the park and play in the sand, mommy." "I hungry mommy." The list goes on and on. He loves being at home so much, it is often difficult in the mornings to get him to day care happy.

This morning was one of those mornings he was not a happy camper. First, I rudely woke him up. Then I asked him if he wanted to wear his dinosaur pajamas or if he wanted to change. He said he wanted to change, but then threw a fit when I changed him. He wanted bunny to stay in his crib sleeping, yet he wanted bunny to go with him. He wanted to stay home and play with his toys, but that wasn't an option.....he cried the entire time getting dressed, riding the mile to day care and 5 minutes at daycare. I finally got him calmed down and Angela took over as she always does a brilliant job. I really can't blame him for loving being at home.

Speaking of home, we finally have a fully functioning computer, our fan for the kitchen came in, since our old microwave fan went on the fritz a couple of months ago. We are trying to install the fan and are looking for what to put on the wall as a back splash to the stove since the granite that is there was cut out for the old microwave and now we are left with a 2x 1.5 foot section of 20 year old wallpaper :). We are patiently waiting the death of our refrigerator since it is on its last year of life. We are also patiently awaiting the fence guy to contact us and get started in replacing our fence. And finally, we are patiently getting quotes for the demolition and remodeling of our back yard. We are about 6 quotes in and still aren't getting the numbers we hope for, or getting people we think will do quality work for the money we are asking. It is really funny because these lawn and irrigation people think we are crazy....we are surely the only Californians we want more grass and less landscaping. We want our children to be able to play baseball, volleyball, soccer, etc. The more grass the better.

Ok, back to Axel. Axel and I visited Grandma Susan this weekend. We were only there for a day and a half, but we had lots of fun. We went out for dinner and Axel did the best he has ever done. he sat in a high chair for the first time and he ate the food at the restaurant. I had a small tortilla made for him and he made it into a chip taco. He only ate half of it, but I think he really enjoyed it. I missed out on a couple of great shots with Grandma and Axel, but I did manage a couple of shots of Axel himself.

Axel has been playing more with our neighbor who is a year older than him. Max is a little more bossy and wild and Axel often gets frustrated while playing, but I think it is the start of a beautiful relationship :) Here they are along the trail that runs behind the park that is across the street from our house.


Axel loves to be the center of attention and "funny man". No matter if we are at a barbeque or at my mom's work meeting stranger's Axel knows how to make people laugh. He does this by making one of his funny faces or by sticking out his tongue, or by doing his favorite magic trick.....hiding an object in his hand and asking, "where did it go?" Here is a picture I managed to get of him being silly in his stroller.

We went to my annual work picnic on Sunday. I took several pictures, but not very many turned out. Here is one of the few that "kind of" turned out. Axel had a blast playing as usual. He tends to focus on the sand, but we managed to get him running up and down hills and playing tackle with daddy in the grass.

Just in case I don't get a chance to post on Father's day I wanted to include a great picture that I managed to take when Grandpa Paul was here. Here is to a great weekend for all of our Father's next weekend!!!