The AXEmas Picture

This will be a quick post, as I am short on time. The big deal this week was getting the Christmas photo taken and the card made so we could get the cards out by the end of the week. Well, this was achieved and most of the cards are ready to be mailed. Only about 10 or 15 are pending due to recent address changes.

There are two things that must be noted about this Christmas photo card. Number one is Christmas has and will always be deemed AXEmas in the Szolusha household as Axel runs and we assume will always run the show....unless another little one comes along down the road, but who knows if and when that will happen. Number two, our little Axel really wasn't in the picture taking mood, so the picture that is sent out shows some character as much bribery was needed. What could possibly help aid in this task.....nothing else but daddy's favorite sweet, chocolate. I was quite disappointed when Keith gave Axel chocolate a few months ago. First, because he is allergic to all dairy products and second, he was way to young to take on the addiction. Well, the addiction has arrived. Full tantrums come when he is denied or cut off from the substance. I am considering a detox program for the little guy, hoping it can be erased from his memory, but I highly doubt daddy is going to let me withhold chocolate for more than a few days :) the good news is that because of a bag of chocolate morsels we have a family Christmas photo! Thanks Nancy!

Besides the photo the other highlights of the week are Axel's love affair with his lovey, Bunny, and his favorite toys of the week, "fishes". You can see Bunny in the family photo above. Here Axel is excited to see Bunny. Here is a short video of Axel playing with his fish.
Axel has also enjoyed playing "horsey". He will actually try to push Keith or I over until we get down so he can climb on up and go for a ride. It is really cute. Axel also continues to love to play with Louis! We did manage to decorate half of our ginger bread house. Axel had way too much fun trying to eat the candy and we had to stop completely because he got so out of control. He didn't manage to actually eat any of the candy, which was good, but his drive and desire to caused havoc on what was suppose to be a fun occasion...maybe next year. Here is the one picture I got of him participating nicely :)

Last I leave you with a very short video of Axel looking at his cousin Sophie. I was holding the card in my hand, which had a couple of pictures of Sophie on it. The next hour was Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. Absolutely adorable! Sorry for the poor picture quality. Have a great week!

Axel turns 20 months old

Axel is 20 months old and that much closer to the big number 2. Axel is continuing to develop at a rapid pace. He is officially running and no longer fast walking. He is also able to jump when holding on to an object. After using his cousin's trampoline Axel is now able to jump when holding onto other objects. Before he would always bend his knees but never get air.

Axel's vocabulary becomes more astounding every day. He loves to say multiple syllable words, like fantastic, elephant, octopus, touch down, broken, basketball. It is the cutest thing in the world to hear him try to say these words. Of course, they are not said perfectly, but you can definitely tell what the word is. Every now and then he will say a word or short sentence with perfect clarity. Moments like these make us do a double take.

Grandpa and Grandma are especially pleased that he is able to say their names now. Axel sometimes calls both of them grandpa, but know one is keeping track :) Speaking of Grandpa and Grandma, we had a great time this past week working on the house, taking Axel on Adventures and just playing around the house. Unfortunately, several activities were cancelled as Axel came down with a stomach virus, a.k.a the flu. Yes, you heard me right....after two colds in a row, vomiting from an antibiotic and only two days of being well he is sick again. We are now on day five of the flu. I am praying that he makes it through day care tomorrow without throwing up so I can make it through my work day without cancelling on patients.

On top of Axel's stomach bug he is also cutting tooth number 12. It seems like it has been months since all 4 first molars came in. I am excited he is getting his 4th bottom tooth and will have a more even smile with 4 front top and bottom teeth.

The big trips were on Monday and Wednesday to the San Francisco Bay Aquarium and San Jose Discovery Museum, respectively. The Discovery Museum was awesome! I can't believe I waited so long to take Axel when my fellow parents have been telling me to go for over a year. We all had tons of fun. I think Grandpa and Grandma even more than Axel :) All of the pictures I have are from the Discovery Museum. Unfortunately, I didn't get any at the aquarium, but it wasn't too exciting anyways.

Here are Grandpa and Axel driving the fire truck.

Playing with the magic air and ball trick :)



Grandma and Axel walking along the movable walkway.

And Grandpa and Grandma being silly making their face and hand impressions.

We had a great visit with Dad and Sonia and were sad to see them go. They were such a great help. We hung pictures, made drapes, put door stops in, filled holes and put in new light fixtures. The list goes on. Thanks again!

I leave you with Grandpa and Axel!

Have a great week!

Thanksgiving Number 2 and more

Happy Thanksgiving from the Szolusha's!


To start off where I ended last week,Dad and Sonia, my dad and stepmother arrived late Sunday night. They have been a great help with getting little things done around the house and hanging out with Axel as Keith and I have had time to ride and spend some time together.

I will jump right to the good stuff and fast forward to this past Thursday which was Thanksgiving. We had a great laid back day as we went to the Mountain Winery for Dinner at 3:30pm. This was the perfect timing so that Axel could get his nap in and so that Keith and I could go for a ride in the morning. Dinner was fabulous and the greatest thing about it was no preparation or clean up was needed.

Axel was an absolute angel at dinner. He sat on my lap and actually allowed me to eat as he ate. This has never happened at any dining experience outside of our house. We sat right next to the jazz band, which I think helped entertain him.
Of course, Axel mostly enjoyed pumpkin pie again, although he did eat a little bread and deep fried apple crisps as well. Here he is enjoying the pie.

After his sugar high Grandma, Axel and daddy played with Mr. Donkey and Llama, that Grammy Goodrow got him when we were in Boston.



After the sugar high came crashing down, so did Axel as he decided to take a break to lie flat on the floor.

Here is a great picture of Grandma and Grandpa and the beautiful view. The Winery overlooks most of the South Bay.

On Friday we headed to Sacramento to see the rest of the Burgess Family. Axel had fun playing with all of his second cousins toys, especially the trampoline. He is still a little young to play with them, but he is becoming more interactive every day it seems.


Here Axel is with the lovely host, my cousin, Jill. Jill is the one who gives all of her three boys cloths to Axel when her youngest, now 3, grows out of them. It has been such a wonderful blessing to not have to go shopping. Especially because Keith and I both hate shopping! Thanks Jill!

Speaking of shopping we decided to get Axel a car for Christmas. We didn't have to give him any lessons. He was able to unlock the door and took to the manual transmission more quickly than myself :)



Actually, we were kind of weirded out that Axel wanted to play with daddy's car, especially since the last time he was in the car, he screamed/cried for nearly an hour and a half on the way home from Jill's.

On a happier note, Grandma helped me put up the Christmas tree, which was a lovely treat. We hadn't decorated a tree together in well over 10 years. It brought back many wonderful memories.

We are excited to have one more week with Grandma and Grandpa before they head back to the Midwest. We have lots of fun adventures planned for the week, so make sure to check back next week for more great Axel news.

Thanksgiving Number 1

What started off a regular ordinary week, turned out to be a fun filled week with many blessings. Monday night I had a great fellowship at BSF learning so many wonderful lessons from the older, wiser women in my group.
Tuesday night Keith's coworker delivered one of his 40 pinball machines for us to "borrow". I believe we will have the pleasure of playing "Pin Bot" for quite a few months. The whole family really enjoys playing. Here are Axel and me in action. He likes to tell me where the ball is and clap when the machine lights up.

Wed. afternoon we discovered that the end of living in a cold house was near. We were finally going to have a new high efficiency furnace installed in our attic on Thursday and Friday. This is a picture of the closet where the old furnace was installed against code and was not working. We had that ripped out and thrown away during our upgrade.


This has been a long 5 week debacle with 3 different furnace guys and dozens of calls and emails to our home warranty and real estate agent. The outcome wasn't exactly what we were hoping for because more money was spent on our part then expected, but we finally have heat and the potential for a linen closet in our house. I will cherish these two things for as long as we own this house. Not having heat has been interesting for all four of us and I can appreciate those who live without it on a regular basis. Now for the linen closet... Being able to organize my towels and sheets is a luxury I won't take for granted again. Who would have thought a 2600 square foot house would be without a linen closet? I didn't realize this until I had a dream the night we made the offer on the house. I woke up realizing that I didn't remember seeing a linen closet. This being the least of Keith's worries really grew to bother me as I love to be organized.

As far as Axel is concerned he didn't mind the cold or the house being without a linen closet. He dressed a bit warmer and had a ton of fun playing with our portalable heaters. Here he is grooming Louis.

Axel taking over Louis's chair.

On Saturday we had a big Thanksgiving dinner. Here is Axel and Daddy preparing the turkey before we put it in the oven. We slow-cooked the turkey at 250 for 5 hours and it came out moist and tasty.

Of course, I didn't remember to take any pictures all day, but here Axel is waiting for the Thanksgiving party to start.

Axel had so much fun with our 14 guests that the only thing he ate was pumpkin pie. Here he is on Sunday enjoying a big bite of Daddy's pumpkin pie. His skin has been horrible the past week because of all the dairy exposure and cold weather, but it is so nice to see Axel scarf food down, since he normally isn't a great eater.


Here is the happy dance and run with the pumpkin sugar rush!

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Tons of Fun in the Sun

This week, despite still being sick for most of it was much more eventful than the past two weeks. Last Sunday Axel had a play date with Chloe, who is 3 months younger, but the exact same size and cuteness as Axel. They played marvelously together, except for when Chloe kept stealing Axel's cracker, where he would cry and scream in frustration :) Thursday Auntie surprised us and came for a visit. We had fun at the park. Unfortunately, I forgot the camera, but Auntie did have her phone so we have one cute picture of Axel finally trying to hang from the bar over the slide like the big boys and girls do. He needed a little boost to reach, but I think he had fun trying to do what the big kids do. On Friday, I finally got on antibiotics, which was just enough time to enjoy the weekend and Keith's company party. Of course, we didn't do a good job of taking pictures and the few we took were not that good, but we did have a good time. Axel did great having a babysitter put him down for bed for the first time. I was quite nervous so I had Lauren come over the night before to put him to bed. Just like I suspected, this was the magic trick that allowed him to feel comfortable when we were gone. He didn't even cry and went right to bed....go Axel! He did get up at midnight to have a little drink of rice milk....or was it to check that mommy and daddy safely arrived home....:) One of Axel's toys of the week was daddy's ipod. Every single day he couldn't wait for daddy to take off the ipod and give it to him to play with. Axel was also really into building towers this week with his Lego's and working on his puzzles. Axel's tent was also a big hit this week. I couldn't believe how much time he was spending in there. We had fun climbing through the tunnel, but the most fun was just lying there looking at the colors of the tent and tickling each other. As you can imagine we made quite the ruckus so when the house became silent as I left Axel to play by himself I became a little nervous. I called for Axel several times without any response. I found him silently lying in the tent. This crazy quite phenomenon happened on more than one occasion. Today he brought his bike into the tent and was just lying there with his bike. I think if Axel was older he would choose to sleep in it he loves it so much! Axel also decided this week he wanted to carry things with him more efficiently. He started putting toys in his pockets and important paper in his shirt!
I have two cute videos to share since you all haven't seen the little guy in action for awhile. The first video is of Axel feeding himself yogurt. We reintroduced soy last Sunday and he seems to be doing fine allergy wise. He absolutely loves yogurt so I am glad that he is handling soy well. He still instantly lights up with any dairy products, but having the soy without any issues is a big help. The second video is of Axel feeding Louis and being his fun little self. It looks like the videos failed again. I will try to download them sometime later this week.

Have a good week. Hopefully the beautiful, sunny weather stays around for awhile for those of us on the west coast :)

Rain and Sickness

This week has been extremely uneventful as both Axel and I have struggled with a bad cold. Although Keith appears to have escaped the full blown cold he was a bit tired and run down this week as well. I have a few cute pictures from Halloween night taken after I did last week's post.

I often forget to mention our other son. Louis turned 8 years old at the end of October. He is doing wonderfully and loving life. Him and Axel are like true brothers who seem to fight and then make up with hugs and kisses.

Keith never wants Louis to miss out in the fun so here is Louis in his Halloween costume.

Here is daddy and Axel getting ready for the trick or treaters.

Of course Axel wanted to put on daddy's costume as well! Yeah...Mr. Money Man...I mean Money boy :)

I also had requests to show Keith and I in our costumes. This is the second time in 5 Halloweens that Keith and I dressed up and went to a party. It was lots of fun, but hard to recover from....hence my cold and feeling run down.

So we are lacking on pictures so I will keep this post short. Axel is still cute as ever as he grows his hair and learns more words. He is really into his sign language flash cards. He looks at the picture and then tells us what it is. He already spent an hour or so today looking through them.

He is a total book worm and loves to pretend to read. He has been pushing back his nap and bedtime again because his three books is not enough. I told daddy to be strict with the three book rule and then I break it by allowing him a forth book myself. I am such a softy. Speaking of softy..... We are having trouble getting Axel to eat sitting in his chair. I end up doing exactly what I told Keith I would not end up doing, and that is feeding him as he plays. My real concern is when should I get strict about this? I don't want it to be a habit, yet I am not totally sure if he is old enough to understand restricting food except at the table. Any suggestions moms, much appreciated.

Ok, I leave you with Axel playing in the front yard and him in his new favorite pajamas that Grandma Susan made him.


Oh....and its been raining :)