Mr. Personality

I cannot stress enough how much Axel has changed over the past month or two. He is more and more a little boy than a baby. He is absolutely his father in every way. He has so much personality. No matter where we go he says, "Hi" to almost everyone. He smiles and makes funny faces at people. He sings and dances as well. And then when he thinks he is funny or he thinks you are funny he says,"Silly Axel" or "Silly Mommy". I was super shy growing up so it amazes me at how much he likes people and interacting with others. Axel is gaining confidence in his physical abilities as well as his social abilities. He climbs into and out of the bathtub, his high chair, the couch, benches, over rocks, down steep hills made of dirt. It is cool to see him do more adventurous things without asking for help. The cool thing is he is one of those kids who asks for help rather than throwing a tantrum when he does need it. I am just glad he is not asking as much :) Axel loves to walk and run. His running is actually getting pretty fast where both feet are off the ground for a split second. He ran almost an 1/8 of a mile yesterday. He regularly walks a quarter to half a mile without an difficulties. Axel is also continuing to eat more and more. The past two days have been awesome food consumption. I thought I captured a video of him downing an egg sandwich, but for some reason it did not get downloaded. (the king and queen of last night's BBQ) As far as what is going on and things we have done, it is pretty much same old. Keith and I are still racing. Axel is loving watching and cheering for us. The only difference is that we were all sick for the past week or so, but everyone is on the mend now. We have had more friend gatherings, with a great BBQ last night. Axel was an angel and fell asleep beautifully at our friends house and then went right back to sleep at 11pm after being awake for the 15 minute transition from house to house. What a champ. We will definitely be able to do more with friends knowing he is so flexible with sleep now. We continue to do the same routine of going to the park and running errands. He loves to grocery shop and help me pick out food. He still loves water and playing in it. He most often likes to strip down to his diaper or nothing :)
We are having so much fun! Sorry for the short post, but we are going to be pretty busy for the next month or so. Next up, Paul, Keith's dad arrives next Saturday. We have tour of California, Giant's baseball game and lots more planned.

Here is Axel singing

Easter, bike rides and more!

It is hard to believe three weeks has passed since my last post. I have thought each weekend I would have time to post, but the time never came. We have lots of fun excuses, like our computer dying on us.....getting an iphone so having to transfer photos from the iphone and the camera to the computer that doesn't get internet to the external hard drive to the lap top that we are now using that can get internet if hooked up to the ethernet cable (the wireless is broken on it :)) In addition to the computer fiasco our microwave sparked and smoked itself to death last week and part of the fence has officially fallen down. All of these things are in the process of getting fixed, but relying on other neighbors to pitch in the 50% cost and the home warranty company to make and appointment and to replace it takes more time than we have patience for.

Good thing is we have been having lots of fun. Axel has had the pleasure of going to bike races every weekend the past three weeks. He has been having soooo much fun! The first one was in Santa Cruz, the second in Menlo Park and yesterday in the Livermore area. He is so cute. He cheers "yahhhh", rings the cow bell, and yells "go Brianne" just like daddy. I remember the first time he said "hi Brianne" 2 weeks ago. I was trying to figure out how he knew my name. Apparently, he was absorbing it with all of the cheering at the bike races. Now when he cheers he no longer says mommy, but Brianne. He was so rev'd up after the bike race yesterday that he sang the whole way home and didn't nap all day. Instead we played in the sprinklers and washed the car for 2 hours.

Speaking of racing I just wanted to share how loved I felt yesterday as Keith and Axel were in the feedzone in my first road race in 3 years. 3 years ago I won this race and yesterday it took every ounce of mental, physical and emotional strength to fight to stay on. I was suffering/hurting the first lap. I thought I was going to get dropped the second lap. We had a breather with a slower third lap. The fourth lap the selection of top 6 riders rode away on the climb and I was left in a group of 4 that soon grew to 7. I tried with every ounce of energy to stay on, but finally "blew up" at about mile 60, which was 3 hours into the race, and exactly the length of my long ride each week. The last 6 miles were long and slow and the climb that I flew up last year to win the race I think I did twice a slow. I was so proud and honored to see Keith and Axel with their shirts off in the feedzone flashing me to victory....of finishing the hardest race I can remember. I do believe I would have given up in the second lap if they weren't there supporting me. Thanks! I love you both so much!!!!

Now lets back track to Easter. Axel had a wonderful Easter with lots of our friends to play with, church and 2 Easter egg hunts. We did an Easter egg hunt indoors

with the eggs that we colored

and a hunt out side with the plastic ones.

I filled the plastic ones with gummy bunnies and quarters and one special one with dark chocolate chips.

Unfortunately, mommy wasn't very smart and he got the chocolate chips first so every egg he opened he was a bit disappointed there was no chocolate in it.


He did like the money though. He couldn't wait to put it in his piggy bank. Mr. Piggy is almost full so Axel keeps asking when we are going to dump out the contents and count the money. Daddy told him he will get to go buy a toy and mommy told him he gets to keep it safe in the bank. Hopefully, he will get to do both :)

Axel's imagination is really blossomed over the past three weeks. A couple of weeks ago he wanted to put his sweat shirt on Louis. So we did. Louis was a good sport and Axel thought it was great. Apparently, Louis also wears 18 month clothing :)

Here Axel climbed into the laundry basket and then demanded "up mommy". So I carried him around the house and spun him in circles until we were both dizzy and laughing hysterically.

We have a little trail behind our house with a water retention stream that fills up each rain season and then dries out. Over the past few months Axel has become more and more intrigued with throwing rocks in it. We now have a daily ritual of going to throw rocks into the stream.

The biggest change I have noticed over the past month is Axel is much more confident and adventerous. I was so proud to see him figure out how to climb down this hill to get to his favorite rock area. In the past Axel would scream "mommy do it", but not anymore!

A few weeks ago Axel learned about static. We played for nearly an hour a couple days in a row inside his tent. I would let go of a piece of my hair and we would watch it "fly" to the side of the tent. Occasionally the hair would fall to the ground and we would have to find it.....or I would have to pull another hair off of my head :) Here Axel is concentrating on a single piece of hair.



Axel's speech has also really improved over the past few weeks. Keith rarely asks me what he is saying now because he articulates so well. Day care also is constantly telling me at how well and frequently Axel is talking. His sentences are also becoming longer. He regularly talks in 4 to 6 word sentences.

I could go on and on with all of the things that we have done and the changes that are taking place, but this post is already getting quite lengthy. Hopefully, I will find time to post again next week so I won't miss out on documenting these changes. Oh, I did want to mention that Axel surprised me today with his ability to recognize that his lovey, "bunny" wasn't the same. His first bunny was so dirty and in need of a few repairs that I got out the back up bunny. I have used the back up bunny before, but didn't notice the difference until Axel pointed them out today. First, he wanted to know what happened to bunny's hands. I told him I fixed bunny so now bunny has two hands (since a stitch had come out before and the hand blended with the arm). Also he kept tracing over bunny's mouth. Sure enough the original bunny has a straight mouth and the new bunny's mouth makes a "V" like he is smiling. Good thing is he decided to accept bunny's changes.
Ok, Have a great week!

Gramma and Grampa Burgess visit!

After the festivities of Axel's birthday party we were blessed with a wonderful visit from my parents. Axel had so much fun hanging out and playing with the two of them. I took them to Axel's favorite park. Axel took no time at all to show them around.

First, he took them to his favorite spot.....the sand!

And then to the other sand area.

And then onto the play structure.

After Axel's nap we headed to Los Gatos and Axel flew a kite for the first time. Sorry for the picture quality, but this was the only picture I was able to capture.

Before leaving for dinner, Axel wanted to show Gramma/pa the sea room and somehow I managed to show some hand me downs from a fellow cyclist that ended up being Axel's apparel for the evening.

Yep, that is right. Axel was a Dalmatian for the evening. He loved it! The costume is a 2T so I think it should fit him perfect by Halloween.

After hanging out in the park we went to our favorite...and only restaurant that we go to (once a year or so), The Pastaria. Axel did well, for not having much experience with the eating out thing.

It seemed like a lot of work and I am not sure Keith and I could have done it alone. Here Sonia is drawing and teaching Axel, but more importantly entertaining him!

Although there trip was only for a day, we really enjoyed it and are looking forward to our Chicago trip in July!

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading. I just want to give a shout out to my awesome cousin Michaela who is running 50 miles today and my other cousin Kristi who is having a baby any minute. Good luck the two of you!!!!

Axel's birthday and birthday party

I know this is a little over do, but I had no time last weekend because of all of the friends and family visiting and I worked 4 days last week and then had to do all of the errands and cleaning yesterday, Friday.....so here goes.

Axel opened his first gift on Wednesday night after coming home from his day care celebration. He loved the tools that were passed down to him from a coworker of mine. Keith and I were looking for something like this so it was perfect timing when my coworker offered this tool box and a wooden puzzle set the day before.

Axel was excited that his birthday was here. "Happy birthday to me" he started saying Wednesday night!

On Thursday, Axel's birthday, daddy took a half day off of work so we could spend some time together celebrating Axel's big debut into this world.

It took him almost 2 hours to open gifts because he played nearly 30 minutes with each toy.

I made Axel his favorite meal, rice and chicken and he didn't even touch it.....oh well, maybe next year. We had a dairy free pumpkin pie for him, but he was already done with the pumpkin pie, being that this was the 4th one in 2 weeks or so.

After opening gifts Axel wanted to go play outside. Axel LOVES water.
He loves to watch it pour out of something, watch it splash the ground and he loves to be in it or splashing it himself.
Here are a few photos of him playing with and in the water. Don't ask me why Axel wanted his clothes off, but somehow his clothes were taken off in the process of the evening.
Apparently daddy had taught Axel the day before how to pee outside on the fence.
Axel decided he wanted to pee in the puddle. Here he is pointing to his pee. (no worries, there is nothing showing, for those of you who are worried :) )

Saturday was Axel's birthday party. Grandma/pa Susan and Brian and GG Millie drove the long drive to attend. Of course, Auntie and Ryan came as well as a couple of close family friends who are more like Aunts and Uncles to Axel because he gets to see them more often. Keith made a dairy free chocolate cake that I think was a big success. I hadn't found a dairy free frosting that was not chocolate that I thought was doable so I went the lazy route and decorated the cake with the candy stars that Axel picked out at the store.

Axel was spoiled with lots of presents once again!

He had a blast opening them. Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of his favorite toy of the day which was a mini tonka truck that went up a ramp and spun around, but as you can see it didn't take long for Axel to catch on to the gift thing, as he said...."more gifts" after opening each one.

Axel's favorite part of the day was blowing out the candles on his cake. We had practiced earlier in the day at least a dozen times with a big candle.

We had to blow them out a few times on his cake as well.
But how could I say no to that amazing smile of joy?!


Axel even teased me by taking no time at all to dive into his cake.


Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed he only had two or three bites, but at least I could feel good about the fact that he could have enjoyed it if he wanted to, without suffering from his dairy allergy, that is.


All in all, it was a great few days of celebration. We want to thank everyone who came or called, sent an email or a card. I know Keith and I, as well as Axel, feel very loved and fortunate for the wonderful family and friends that we have.

On a side note, I wanted to share that Axel is already like his mother and father....he loves to save money. He received a piggy bank when he was born and ever since he was able to put money and coins inside he has. Now when he finds a coin, or receives money in the mail he immediately asks to put it in his piggy bank and after placing the money inside he says, "more money mommy".

Ok, hope to do another blog about Gramma/pa Bruce and Sonia's visit today or tomorrow so check back again.