Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday!

Keith was completely amazed this year at the oversight of Thanksgiving for shopping and I had a week of listening to him talk about the crazy things that stores were doing in order to compete with each other for sales. The great thing about all of the entertaining news stories was the realization at how lucky we are to not be people who need "things" to survive, but rather survives off of the love for each other and our Blessed Lord.

The Szolusha's had an amazing Thanksgiving meal prepared by Gramma Susan and were privileged with the presence of Great Grandma Goldstein. Although we took over 100 pictures, we somehow missed taking very many pictures of Axel with his wonderful relatives. I believe I am so used to taking pictures of Axel I forget that I need to take advantage of taking pictures of Axel interacting with his relatives when he is around them. Axel did have somewhat of a rough day due to the fact that he wanted to be around all of the excitement instead of taking his naps, but boy did he have fun!

Here he is rubbing his eyes around 1pm with Grandpa Brian in the process of trying to tickle the little guy.


Keith took Axel out into the "jungle" to meet Mr. Aloe Plant, but Axel wasn't too impressed.

I was trying to entice Axel to crawl, but instead he decided to look real cute and smiley like always.

Axel was having a great time with Dewey and daddy thought it would be great to see Axel in his hat.

Axel seems to be making quicker gains in the walking progression then the crawling progression this week. He is able to take up to 10 steps with support. As far as crawling is concerned he hasn't made anymore gains than the rocking on his hands and knees, scooting backwards and spinning around on his belly. Oh, well.....I hear some babies go straight to walking :)

Axel pigged out like the rest of us and ate 4 times for a total of almost 2 cups of food!!! Here he is complaining of his belly hurting after dinner.

The hit toy of the day....Gramma's wooden spoon!

Axel's new highchair that Grandpa Brian picked out for Axel's visits to Gramma's house. He obviously loved the highchair and his cool new dish, I mean box that the dish came in :)

Dewey and Auntie Shannon showing off the dogs and Axel's Christmas picture ornaments :)

last, but not least a preview of what our Christmas card might look like with our first family photo. But some of you may notice a couple of members missing.....I couldn't spoil it!

Busy times

Hi All! Just wanted to say all is well at la Casa de Szolusha. We have been really busy spending time with friends, working, riding the bike and of course playing with little Axel. I promise to post lots of photos of Turkey Day and Axel turning 8 months next Monday, but for now I leave you with a few fun photos....








Enjoy the short work week and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!!

More New Tricks

Having 5 days off of work in a row has allowed Axel to improve his sleep from good to great. Axel has only been getting up once a night the past 5 days and his naps have been totaling 2+ hours. It is great to see him thriving. As the books say, with sleep comes new tricks!!!

So I started Axel on egg yolk after our last posting. I read in the "Super baby book" that it is a great finger food. I didn't intentionally plan on allowing Axel to start trying finger food because he hadn't really shown me the "pincher grasp," but after realizing how dry egg yolk is I let Axel have a field day getting messy and trying to feed himself. It was one of the first times that I had to completely change the outfit Axel was wearing. Lets just say the dogs had a great time eating everything that hit the floor and I am not necessarily looking forward to the transition of Axel "feeding" himself and the mess that goes along with it :).

I introduced the sippy cup over a month ago. Axel really hasn't shown improvement with consuming liquids through it, but the past week he has become more and more interested in drinking water from a cup. I think half of the interest is actually water and the other half is him wanting to bite or suck on the cup. Axel has appeared to have outgrown his baby toys. He has officially entered the phase where everything that everyone else has is what he wants. I will give Axel a toy to play with and 9 out of 10 times he fusses until I give him something plastic from the kitchen. It doesn't matter if it is a plastic Tupperware lid or spoon, it is new, fun and chewable.

Today, I gave Axel the same spoon in the picture below while I swept the floor and he jumped up and down waiting for me to give him the broom to bite on. Of course, I told him it wasn't a toy and that he was going to have to be happy playing with the spoon because I wasn't about to let him chew on the end of the broom. This was all cute and dandy until Axel started crying for the doggy toys. I don't let Axel chew on the rawhide or doggy foot, but I am super tempted to let him so that I can get a picture of it :) Now I have been disciplined to not let him chew on the doggy toys, but I never said I wouldn't let him chew on the dogs themselves. Besides, Touis loves it!!!
Keith and I absolutely love Axel to pieces. He is so much fun to be around and he constantly makes us laugh and smile. We hope you enjoy the pictures and videos as much as we do. Have a great week!

Growing Boy!

Axel is 7.5 months old and amazing Keith and I every day with how much older he is looking. He is trying to communicate verbally and with gestures more and more. He grunts when he is hungry, when he wants to be picked up and when he wants a change of scenery. Grunting is a big step up from crying. Grunting equals mommy laughing :)

This week I was blessed? with another day off of work. When I went to drop of Axel on Tuesday the daycare informed me that they were going to be closed the following day for Veterans day. I was completely surprised because I thought I had closely looked over the Holidays that I needed off of work. Well, a few phone calls and all of my patients were rescheduled, happy or not. I did discover the daycare's handbook of listed Holidays did not include Veterans day so I am anxious to see what they say when I drop Axel off on Monday. I wrote them a nice email yesterday asking for an explanation or an updated Holiday list, but no news yet.

Keith informed me that he needed to take the camera to work sometime this week so I made sure to take as many pictures as possible yesterday, hence why Axel has the same outfit in all of the pictures :)

Well, Keith decided to take the camera to work today. Would you believe that is was today that Axel decides to pull himself up to standing? Here is how it happened. I was in the kitchen cooking and Axel was on his play mate right outside of the kitchen with his feet on the dog gate. After 5 minutes of kicking the doggy gate and grunting I came over and sat next to Axel in the middle of the dog gate. Axel grabbed my hands and I pulled him up to standing. He then grabbed the bars and proceeded to sit down and stand up on his own. I of course was there for spotting because I don't trust that he won't fall and hit his head. He thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Axel and I went to the doctor today to get a couple of shots. He weighed in at 16 lbs 7 oz and is now up to the 11th percentile!! He is 26 1/4 inches tall which is the 18th percentile! Keith and I thought he jumped to the 50th percentile because he looks so much junkier and feels so much heavier. He is also a complete pig and eats 3meals of almost 4 TB of food AND anywhere from 33-40 oz of milk!!!! We are soooo PROUD that Axel is taking after mommy and daddy with the big appetite. We hope it continues.

Axel loved the pears and asparagus and tomorrow I think I am going to start him on egg yolk. Funny thing with egg yolk is that they recommend 1 every 1-2 days and if Axel needs to have it 4 days in a row to rule out an allergy, is it okay for him to have 4 egg yolks or should I give him half an egg yolk for 4 consecutive days? oooh, decisions, decisions!!!! Alrighty, I am getting tired so I will cut this short. Here are a couple of pictures of Axel looking cute while working on his crawling/scooting skills. I wish I could say that Axel loves reading books like he used to when he was younger. Currently he is more interested in eating them. I have included a short video of what Axel thinks a book is used for. I have also included a short video of Axel jumping in his exersaucer. Everyone always asks me if we bought a "jumper" for Axel. Lets just say Axel doesn't need one......

Hi All! What a wonderful weekend for the Szolusha's.

Friday morning Axel and I had fun visiting with my friend Julia and her 6 week old daughter, Sadie. Here they are holding hands:)

We went for a nice stroll downtown and I enjoyed a decaf latte at Peet's Coffee.

Gramma Susan arrived save and sound Friday afternoon, after dealing with a dead car battery all morning. We were glad that she was able to still come up after getting a nerve racking call Thursday night about the dead car :). Axel and Gramma had a blast playing together while Keith and I were able to enjoy a beautiful ride along the coast.


Auntie Shannon and Ryan came over for dinner. I was able to bribe Auntie to give me a haircut for a bottle of wine:) Keith was nervous that she would cut it too short, but he was happy with the end result. No one could believe my hair grew 4 inches in 4months, having had a similar haircut just before the 4th of July.


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

He is starting to show more signs of crawling. I hope to capture him rocking back on all fours this week. It is the cutest thing to see him do this while squealing in delight at his new trick.
Here Axel is going for Louis and Touis foot. We are asking Grandpa Brian for a squeaky foot for Axel for Christmas:)


Axel is also becoming more aware of his surroundings and showing an increased attention span. Here he is mimicking me typing and loving all of the colors on the computer screen.


Have a great week!

flats, flats and more flats

This past week has been an interesting one for Keith and myself. It started off with my ride last Saturday. Approximately 2-3 miles from home I hit a very slick corner and before I knew it I was sliding along the road looking up instead of down. This sign was put up AFTER several people crashed/slid out on this corner, including myself. My helmet worked wonders and nicely broke in two locations saving me from any type of head injury. My hip was the only real thing to suffer. A trip to the ER cleared my right pelvis and hip of a fracture. I was glad to know that the pain was only soft tissue. I somehow managed to get Axel to daycare and myself into work on Monday. A cane and crutch saved my day and allowed me to hobble from the waiting room to my treatment room for each patient. Kind of interesting providing "physical therapy" for others injured :)

Our bad luck continued as I received a phone call from Keith at around 6pm Monday night. My first instinct was to ask if he was okay. The only reason why he would be calling me a few minutes from the time he should be home was to tell me he wasn't going to be home. Yep, my instincts were right. Keith luckily was "only" getting a ticket for walking his bike across railroad tracks when the lever arm was coming down. Apparently, the county is beefing up security around railroad tracks because of the 4 recent suicides committed by high schoolers. Keith was "unfortunately", riding with extremely bright night lights he designed at work, which made it too hard for him to go unnoticed.

Tuesday morning as I was still hobbling on a borrowed cane from work, Keith went to put Axel in the car for me. When he opened the door to the garage he noticed that I had a rear passenger side flat tire on my car.

No way, I thought. How could this be possible? Well, to make a long story short, we now have road side assistance for MY car under our insurance, a pump in my trunk to act like a lever arm to unscrew overly tight lug nuts, and a nicely patched tire for only $26. I did make it to work to see 7 of my 12 patients and Keith made it to work just in time to make his 2 meetings for the day.

Enough about mommy and daddy chaos. Axel, on the other hand has been doing wonderfully. He is starting to show signs of crawling. He is scooting quite well, but still gets frustrated when he doesn't go anywhere. Because of all of Axel's increased strength over the past month Keith and I thought it would be a good time to try to ween Axel from his medication. I am excited to say that Axel has been off of the Zantac for 5 days and he is still eating extremely well. He still has some very delayed spit up, but he no longer arches his back or has any screaming fits at night (knock on wood). Hopefully, he will continue to do well and the medication will be something of the distant past.

Axel has also been adding new foods to his palate. He now eats green beans, pears and white potatoes, in addition to the sweet potatoes, carrots, avocado, butternut squash, and bananas. Next on the list is asparagus. After the asparagus I will have time to introduce more fruits, now that he is 7 months old. I do have to admit that preparing starches and veggies is much easier than fruit, because fruit doesn't freeze as well. I now take back what I have said a half dozen times over the past 6 weeks.....I DO understand why people buy jarred baby food. I almost want to cheat and go by pears, peaches, etc from whole foods, but I promised myself I wouldn't......so please wish me luck!!!

Axel is eating 2-3 meals a day and consuming about 3-4 cubes (ice cube tray) per day. I believe 1 cube is considered 2 TBS of food. He really does seem to like food and loves watching mommy and daddy eat. Speaking of food, I have to mention Keith bought a blumpkin (a blue pumpkin). it was recommended for us to try it with our pumpkin bread and pie recipes. Well, Keith so graciously made some blumpkin bread last night only to discover that both of our stomachs can't handle the taste.
The initial taste is the taste of the yummy spices that our pumpkin bread is known for, but by the time we swallowed our first few bites we both thought the bread was going to come back up. Yep, we can't believe it either. Keith and I LOVE anything pumpkin, but have now finally found something we DON'T like. We threw out the entire blumpkin bread and cooked blumpkin left over for the pie we were going to make. It is on our agenda to make something with yummy sugar pie pumpkin as soon as possible to rid our minds of the awful taste. I keep thinking this might be a blessing for me to help me get over my over indulgence of sweets. Most of me is hoping that I won't be tainted and that I will still love the pumpkin pie and bread once I taste it again :)

Next week Axel goes in for his second shot of polio and hep B (I just started these at his 6 month wellness check). I hope to get a chance to weigh him and check his length, as well. Axel's daycare thinks he is a big boy. I can't wait to see if he has gone up drastically in the percentile for weight because he is definitely a solid baby. When I watch Axel play I think of him as one big muscle because he is constantly moving his entire body. Here is one example of Axel having a blast with his rattle.


We are thinking that Axel is just about to outgrow his car seat. His feet look like they are going to start to hang over and his shoulders look like they fall a little higher than the harness, which is definitely a safety hazard. I think we will change to his big boy car seat in a week regardless of what his measurements are next Friday.

Axel continues to do well at night sleeping about 12 hours waking 2 times a night on most nights, with 1-2 nights a week waking only once. His naps are pretty regular at home. He typically takes two long naps (1.25-1.75 hours) for me, but occasionally will take 3, 45 minute naps. At daycare Axel is taking 2, 45min-1 hour naps, which is wonderful progress.

Keith wanted me to mention his solution to a puzzle he solved was published in the MIT magazine. He was so psyched that he has solved two more since. I will make sure to post the link or a picture next time. Right now Axel and I are waiting for Grandma Susan to arrive. We are all excited to visit. It has been quite some time since we have spent time together. Auntie Shannon and Ryan are coming over for dinner. I will try to post again on Sunday so check back soon!!!

Axel turns 7 months on Halloween!

One year ago yesterday Keith and I went to Kaiser for our big ultrasound to discover that we were having a boy. Now one year later, our little baby is becoming a unique person with quit the personality! It seems each morning when I greet Axel he is a bit heavier and taller. It also appears that his hair is growing in at a much faster rate. I find it quite amazing to see how much he changes on a daily and weekly basis.

Axel was a duck for Halloween.

The Anderson's were gracious enough to pass it on to Axel. Axel seemed extra talkative last night while in his costume. It was as if he knew what was going on and was playing up the hype as well as he could.

Keith took him "trick or treating" on our street in order to say hello to our friendly neighbors. Although no candy was exchanged, pumpkin pie recipes were.

Speaking of pumpkin pie, Grandma and Grandpa Burgess were able to try some of Keith's delicious pumpkin pie last night. I believe it was a hit. Most people who try Keith's pumpkin pie love it, even if they are not pumpkin lovers like ourselves. They also stayed to watch transformers II before heading back to their hotel for the last night. They left early for central California where they will be staying for the next few days for more golf and time with Grandpa's sisters.

Grandma and Grandpa were also able to feed Axel a couple of times over their stay. Here they are displaying excellent team work as Axel is enjoying his lunch yesterday!



Well, I will cut this short again. Too many other things to do right now. We hope you all have a great week!