Axel's first tooth and more!

Well, I was hoping to have posted this on Monday, but the holiday weekend got away from us. This past Saturday Keith and I noticed Axel's first tooth pushing through his gums. Yep, that is right, it only took 10.5 months for the bottom front left tooth to begin to emerge. It is the cutest little tooth at just a few millimeters. The bottom right front tooth is also making its way through the gums. It is about a week behind the left. From what Keith and I hear it takes about a month for the entire tooth to emerge. I tried my best to take advantage of Axel crying to give you all a glimpse of the first two teeth. It is times like these that I think I am a bad mother :), but sometimes getting the memory on film is more important than Axel crying out of frustration (sorry Axel). Besides Axel's first tooth Axel also received his first bike! Grammy Goodrow sent it to Axel for Valentine's Day. He absolutely loves it. Here are a few pictures of him with it. Here is a picture of him frustrated. I am hoping he will catch on quickly at how to maneuver it around furniture. I also have two videos. One of him on it and the other of him pushing it. The funny thing about him on it is that his legs don't quite touch so he is only able to go backwards by using his tippy toes. As you can tell from the video I was extremely excited at how brilliant Axel was to figure out to push it even if it was the wrong direction :)


Axel also experienced his first diaper rash the past few days. I am still amazed at how bad diaper rash can get and what it actually looks like. The poor guy had blood on his diaper. Luckily, he is healing quickly and day care is finally able to change him more than 3 times per day! For those of you who haven't experienced this yet, the remedy that has worked best for us is using Vaseline over the affected area along with his typical cloth diaper. It is important to put a thick layer of Vaseline and to make sure the diaper is donned loosely. I have also been letting Axel play naked for about 10 minutes between changes. It is not practical to let him run around naked as we have hardwood floors and I don't think sliding his pee pee on the floor would feel very good. However, if Axel could walk independently or crawl on his hands and knees I would definitely consider an hour or two a day of naked play to really allow the rash to heal. We tried the Destin, but I think Axel is allergic to it because it was after I used it about 3 times that the rash got really bad.

Axel continues to love the dogs. He attempts to do everything they do. I let him play outside in the grass. He wanted to eat the grass, leaves, dirt and branches just like them. Here is a cute picture of Axel holding a small branch that the dogs play tug of war with. Last I leave you with a couple of cute pictures of the little guy.
Oh, Keith and I had a wonderful weekend. Keith surprised me for Valentine's Day by cleaning the house and buying a little sparkling apple cider and mini heart chocolate cake. It was a wonderful day. There is nothing like a gift of cleanly mopped floors.....especially if you all know that I once was a clean freak.....but life with two dogs and two boys doesn't allow much time for a sparkling clean house. Thanks sweetie for making me feel so special!

Air Axel

Axel appears to be growing cuter and cuter by the day. Keith and I have had so much fun with him we are looking forward to seeing how Axel's personality continues to blossom and grow.

Life has been pretty low key the past week and a half. Axel did venture to his first bike race of the year with daddy and myself. He had an amazing time. It is hard for me to believe he is such a social butterfly. It doesn't matter if you are dog or human or nature for that matter....Axel loves them all. Here is a cute picture of Axel being kissed by Sophie, one of my teammates dog.
Axel went around all day opening his mouth waiting to be kissed by every dog he saw. He does it all of the time now at home too, but Louis and touis seem to only want to kiss everything but Axel's mouth :)
We were blessed with a beautiful day in Napa on Sunday and enjoyed hanging out with all of our cycling friends and then listening to the remainder of the super bowl on the way home.

Axel has had tons of milestones the past couple of weeks. He is now getting up on his own from low surfaces. He still needs reminders to bring his knees under him when he is trying to pull himself up to standing when using higher surfaces. He is consistently walking 5 step independently before falling forward. He is also trying to feed himself more and more. Here is a couple of pictures of his first attempts a couple of weeks ago. Now when I assist him he is able to bring the spoon or fork to his mouth without the desire to toss it everywhere :) Although he still has moments where he enjoys playing with his food! Axel still loves the radio flyer wagon we bought him, but unfortunately for us he wants to ride in it more than push it. I put him in it when I was in a bind about a week ago and now every time he sees it he drapes his arms over the medal bar and cries until I put him in it. Good thing is I don't have to worry about him falling, but bad thing is I am the one getting the exercise rather than him:) Axel did manage to stand up in it when I left him in it in the kitchen while I was preparing his breakfast. Luckily he was right next to me so I was able to get him before he attempted to move.

Axel continues to like to explore. I left him in the living room while I was throwing something away, In a matter of one minute he managed to disappear although I could still hear him clunking (his tongue) away. After searching for him I found him between the coffee table and couch. I still am not sure what he was trying to do, but it was awfully cute! So I am sure you are wondering why I named the blog "air Axel". Well, Axel has been doing this new thing the past couple of weeks of biting his tongue or sticking his tongue out with everything that he does. It is super cute. I always think of Michael Jordan with the tongue out during technical shots. You never know, maybe Axel is preparing himself to be the next Jordan in the baby world :) (for those of you who don't know I grew up in Chicagoland and I was privileged to be able to go to a handful of games with my parents during the years when the Bulls dominated the sport :)) Axel still loves the nesting blocks that Grammy Goodrow bought him. He now tries to drink from them hoping something comes out. After 20 times you would think that he would get it, but it has been days now! I think he is super excited to have mastered his sippy cup! I know we are. It is our goal to get him off the bottle and on the sippy cup 100% of the time within the next month or two. Wish us luck! I also wanted to show that Axel has shown some form of reasoning skills. He now lifts the blinds to see out the window instead of bending over. He also uses the bottom of the blinds to itch his scalp. If you look closely you can see his hair sticking up after getting some good scalp scratching in :) The last two things that have been really exciting achievements the past few days is Axel can now clap and wave good bye. He has only done the wave a couple of times without prompting when I say "adios" as I leave him at daycare, but the clapping he is doing consistently the past couple of days. Here is a video of him clapping.

New tricks at 10 months of age!!!!

Axel happily turned 10 months this past Sunday, the 31st of January. He is as cute as ever. We took over 100 pictures the past week so this post will be mostly pictures and hopefully a few videos if I am able to download them all. The big accomplishment the past week is Axel is finally able to pull himself up to standing. Yeah!!!!! But.....he needs some assistance in getting starting. All I have to do is bring his knee under him and then he is able to do the rest. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get a good vidoe because Axel was ready for his nap. In the video below he needed a little more assistance and encouragement then he typically needs. I am hoping by the end of this week he will have learned that bringing his knees under him will allow him to get up completely on his own. As you can see from the video he doesn't use much brain power, but does what most of us Burgesses have done with physical taskes.....and that is "muscle it" with bruit force:) I taught him to bring one leg forward and to put one foot flat on the floor in order to help stand, but he rather just dig his little feet into the ground and muscle it up. It is super cute that he often bites the surface he is using to lift himself up as if he is getting extra strength from his jaw.
The other big accomplishment this week is that Axel is finally able to drink from his sippy cup independently. I often have to say "up" for him to remember to tilt his head back in order to consume the water instead of just the air, but I am positive he will have this down pat in the next few days as well. Keith taught Axel how to feed him this past week as well. Here is a cute video of the two of them. I hope Axel will always be as generous as he is with his Cherrios here :)

Oh, Axel had another big accomplishment this week. He finally gets the concept of putting things inside each other. Grammy Goodrow bought Axel cool nesting and stacking blocks for Christmas that he absolutely loves. They entertained him for over 30 minutes the first day I gave them to him. Let's just say Keith was grateful for the gourmet dinner I was able to prepare because of those blocks :) Axel is still completely intrigued by the dogs. He appeared to want to help walk the dogs on Sunday so we were glad to have him give it a try. He managed to help walk Louis to the end of the drive way :) Everyone keeps saying that Axel is looking more like me, but from this picture I think Axel looks a lot like his daddy. Their eyes are almost identical except for the color! We finally took the opportunity to get a naked walking photo. What is cuter than a baby walking or running away from mommy and daddy naked? Axel still loves taking a bath. Grandma Susan sent him his first bath toys. Hopefully, we will remember to buy him more bath toys because I am sure these blinking rubber duckies will get old quickly, but he sures loves them for now! We also received the radio flyer baby walker I ordered today. We were so excited to have Axel try it out we had him stay up later than usual until Keith finished putting it together. Let's just say he absolutely LOVED it. I think Keith and I were almost having more fun than Axel. We only had one close call were Axel was trying to back up, but accidentally let go of the walker. Luckily I caught him which made him giggle even more.
Have a great week!

Little Mechanic

Sorry for the long delay in posts, but Axel and I have been recovering from being quite ill. Axel developed his first ear infection from the virus he picked up a couple of weeks ago. Monday, MLK day, Axel had a high fever and Keith had to stay home to take care of the two of us. Axel is almost done with his 10 days of antibiotics and is doing much better now. I actually had to miss work on Tuesday because Axel couldn't go to day care until he was fever free for 24 hours and I was feeling so bad I decided to stay home and try to "recover" as best I could while taking care of Axel. In the picture above Axel is a bit frustrated that he is lying on his stomach and wants to stand and play. He was crying with his head down until I picked him up. Because of the rain and bad weather Keith and I did a lot more riding on the trainer the past week. Axel absolutely LOVES the bike and the trainer. You can see from the pictures below how fascinated he was with every part of the bike.....even my shoes....and Keith's helmet (picture not included) He also loved the trainer itself. Auntie Shannon and Ryan came over for our first adventure out for dinner as a family since Axel was born. (the only other time I went out to dinner is when my parents were here over Mother's day when Axel was a couple months and that was without Keith)We all had a great time and Axel did fabulously. Keith and I were so proud. Mind you we had to go to dinner at 4pm so that we could be back to put Axel to bed by 5:30pm, but it was still progress. I have been working on extending Axel's bedtime this week and he is up to 5:45pm. I am hoping with the time change he will be able to go to bed around 6:30pm so daddy gets to see him before bed :)

We have a few short videos. One is of Axel dancing with the trainer and Auntie Shannon. Another is daddy and Axel throwing the ball with the dogs and the last video is Axel cruising along the coffee table. We hope you enjoy!

Axel's first fall

Well, I had hoped for something exciting to happen in order to have a topic to post on. Unfortunately, the excitement wasn't exactly what I had in mind. On Sunday Axel was a bit fussy in the morning and when he is, he wants me to be around him and play with him all of the time. I was getting tired of squatting behind him as he was cruising along our bench so I decided to stand behind him and write in his memory book. Low and behold he turned left lunging for the TV stand and I didn't have time to catch him. He hit his head on the side of our wooden TV stand. I felt soooo awful. It took all my courage not to cry. I iced his head for about 3-4 minutes. That is about all he would let me and then I gave him some Tylenol after rechecking all of the signs to look for after your infant or toddler hits his head. We went for a walk in his infant carrier which I haven't used for a few months. He seemed like his normal self so then I let him take his morning nap. He arouse his happy playful self. Everyone tells me that I need to get use to it, especially because we have a boy, but I don't know if I am ever going to get use to Axel hurting himself. You can see the bruise on the side of his head if you look closely.


Axel is still scooting on his belly and loving the assisted walking and cruising along furniture and walls. The funny thing that he started doing this week is stopping and plopping on his butt when he wants to get something on the floor or wants to change direction. From what I have heard most kids don't know how to get from standing to sitting, but like his mom and dad Axel does everything backwards. He still doesn't quite get how to pull himself up to standing. He is super strong in his legs and he gets his legs straight under him with his butt in the air, but he forgets to use his upper body to finish the job. I suppose that is my fault since I am typically their helping or assisting him :)


Axel also started "biting the couch" like our Pug Louis. I wish I had my camera handy yesterday but by the time I found where it was it had no charge so I missed a ton of cute pictures and one of those was Axel biting the blanket on the couch next to Louis doing the same thing.

I also missed Axel's first experience with macaroni and cheese. I made the Organics for the first time and it was good. We ate it together, but I am not sure Axel cared for the cheese. The funny part about the experience is Axel didn't want to feed himself with his hands, he didn't want to eat with his spoon, but the only way he would eat any is with my fork. So I would take a bite and then he would take a bite. With every bite he would make a face as the fork went into his mouth, but he refused to take it any other way. Boy, did I wish our camera was charged for that one....next time!

I forgot to mention last week that Axel seemed to be completely healthy and doing quite well. He had been in a great routine day and night only waking once at night. Well, since an entire week or so went by with him being healthy, guess what?! That's right folks...he picked up another cold at daycare this week. Awful runny nose, cough and horrible couple of nights with frequent wakings. The unfortunate thing about this cold is I caught it, hence the delay in posting this weeks update. Luckily day care is closed tomorrow so Axel and I will have one more day to recover! Here is a picture I took on Thursday of him using the snack tray in his exersaucer for the first time. How cool to snack and play at the same time, despite the runny nose!

Oh, I had to include this picture. Last Sunday about an hour before bed Axel peed all over his clothes while I was changing his diaper. I didn't want to dirty any "cute outfits" so I put on these green pants and pooh onesie that he hadn't worn in some time. I think he looked hilarious, almost 80ish.

Last, but not least Axel has become quite the investigator. Here he is playing with the "dog towels" while I was preparing dinner. I thought it was hilarious how much fun he had taking them out of the cupboard. As you can see from this picture he is pretty good at responding to his name now. I would say he turns to look at us about 90% of the time.

Ok, that's all for now!

Our little walker

The Szolushas have had a wonderful week. Axel transitioned wonderfully back to day care. With a couple of key modifications Axel is now taking two, 1+ hour naps at day care. They finally put Axel's pack n play in the bedroom with a heater running for white noise. With Axel no longer getting overly tired he is continuing to be more and more active. He is starting to get hard to keep up with. He has mastered the scooting thing and can scoot quite quickly around the house. So much so if I leave him for a second I will find him pulling on a cord or going to his two favorite places, the dog bowls and the dog door. I can't figure out why Axel likes playing with the dog bowls, putting his hand in the dog bowl filled with water and playing/trying to eat the dog food during dinner time, but he consistently does the same thing every night. During the day he is fascinated with the doggy door and my book shelf, as well as the bottom of the refrigerator and our floor heaters. Axel sure is an investigator. Auntie Shannon and Ryan stopped by on Saturday to bring Christmas gifts they purchased from their Australia trip. Axel likes his rattle but he plays with the box it came in even more. You can see here he went right for the box after opening it! Keith and I got a very cool wine holder that was hand painted. Since our Italy trip, 3years ago, Keith and I have become quite the wine drinkers (a whole 10-12 bottles a year :) which is a lot for us) Shannon also brought gifts from Grandpa Brian. Now all three of our boys have their own new foot. However, despite them each having a foot of their own, they still all want to play and chew on the same one. Good thing Axel thinks its fun, although Louis and Touis get a little frustrated. Now onto the title of today's blog. Keith and I finally made time to take a video of Axel walking. We went outside because we have had several comments from our friends and relatives that our videos are too dark because of our poorly lit house.
I was also able to take a few videos of Axel cruising along the coffee table today. Here is the best one.

It was hard to take because Axel has no fear and sometimes he gets ahead of himself. Our coffee table has very hard edges and I am just dreading the day that I hear a clunk. I still let Axel fall but I always catch him so that he has a soft landing. I am trying to teach him by saying "Axel go boom", but he doesn't seem to quite get it. If I see he is going to fall directly on his butt I let him. Keith and I are both praying that Axel will start to have more self preservation instincts soon because otherwise we are going to be really old in a few years due to worrying about our little guy getting hurt!

Axel's 9 month check up was today. The bummer news is he only weighed 17 lbs 2 oz. which puts him at the 5th percentile, but the good news is his height of 27.5 inches is the 22nd%ile. We also found out that Axel is a little anemic so we will be enforcing more oatmeal and rice cereal until he is fully transitioned to formula. Axel loves fruits and veggies so much I often forget to mix them with cereal, but now we really have to, at least for the next month. Most likely within 4-6 weeks my freezer full of breast milk will be gone and I am on my last few days of pumping. I am a bit sad to stop providing for Axel, but at the same time I am really ready to be done with the whole nursing/pumping thing.

Keith and I both decided for our next child we will wait much longer before transitioning him or her to a bottle in order to reduce the amount of pumping. I have spent 1-3 hours a day pumping over the past 9 months on top of the hours of nursing for the first 5 months. That is a lot of hours if you ask me. No more Internet surfing for me! I will no longer have an excuse to sit in front of the computer for 20 minutes at a time throughout the day...... thank goodness! Anyway, the Szolushas have a low key weekend ahead of family time and bike riding. Hopefully something exciting will happen so I have something to write about next week!

Axel turns 9 months!

Yesterday Axel turned 9 months with the rolling in of the new year. He has now officially been out of the womb longer than he was in the womb. Keith and I are amazed at how much he has changed over the past 1 month let alone the 9 months he has been around.

Good news is Axel seems to be getting better by the day. He is now sleeping in his own room again. Keith and I also seem to be on the mend. We are unsure if all of us keep getting sick due to the old house we are living in so we continue to inspect for mold and continue saving for a house that we hope to purchase in the near future.
We are hoping that our constant cold like symptoms are due to Axel being in day care and not the house, but we will soon find out as we continue to monitor the house and all of our symptoms.

Ok, back to our cute child. Axel must be catching up for his decreased appetite or in a growth spurt because he has been consuming 35-40 oz of milk over the past 3 days. He also ate a whopping 8 cubes yesterday on top of the 35 oz of milk! We love it when he eats, but I am getting a little sick of the 2-3 night wakings and hope that he resumes his 1-2 night wakings soon!

We added beets and kale to Axel's diet. I don't think he really cares for them, but as long as we mix it with sweet potatoes, yams or squash he will pretty much eat anything. Now that he is 9 months we will be introducing a much wider range of food. Keith and I are both excited about this because within the next three months he should be getting closer and closer to a "normal" toddler diet which will be a lot less work for us. I do enjoy making Axel's food, but I rather make it along with the dinner I make for Keith and I.

I forgot to mention that Axel weighed in at 17lb and 1 oz during our ER visit last week. We have his 9 month check up next Thursday on the 7th so I will be sure to include his new stats next week. I am looking forward to seeing how much he gained in 2 weeks with the huge increase in food consumption.

Since Axel has been home for over a week now he seems to be doing a lot better in the mobility department. He has really become quite comfortable scooting around the entire house. He also loves to play standing.


He can stand for nearly an hour. The only bummer thing for him is he doesn't know how to go from stomach to sitting or standing. I have to assist him, otherwise he just lies on his stomach reaching up with his hand crying.

I think it is hilarious at how frustrated he gets. I already see mommy and daddy personality traits in him. Both Keith and I get frustrated when we can't do something, especially when it comes to athletics because it has always come naturally for us. Hopefully Axel will learn patience sooner than his mommy and daddy learned it :)

Axel is becoming more and more talkative. It often sounds like he is having a conversation with us. Sometimes it also sounds like he is saying something in Spanish. For those of you who don't know Axel is in a full Spanish Immersion Day care. They speak 100% Spanish there. Axel also received the coolest present from great G and G Eick of a drum that sounds the alphabet in Spanish and English. Keith and I have been practicing X and Y a lot and now it sounds like Axel is saying equis. I griega, or "Y", and Jota or "J" are the Szolusha favorites :)

Axel still does not have any teeth, but continues to show signs of teething. I have even caught him chewing/sucking on his thumb 3 times in he past two weeks. Usually he chooses to put all of his fingers in his mouth as pictured below.

Despite the lack of teeth, Axel's hair seems to be coming in at a more rapid pace the past few weeks. He is looking more and more like a little boy every day.

We wish you all a very Happy 2010. We are looking forward to spending it with our little bundle of joy!