Phoenix's first virus

Phoenix had a flu virus this past week. She had her first fever Monday afternoon through Wednesday morning. It peeked at 101.3 and was mostly around 100 degrees for the 30+ hours she had the fever. She had some vomiting on Tuesday and then had a rash and diarrhea Wednesday through Friday. Luckily, she seems mostly healthy. Here eating and sleeping are still off a bit as she is waking twice a night to drink and isn't consuming solids very often.

I started trying this very expensive hypoallergenic rice cereal for the past four days, which she doesn't seem to want to eat. the good news is that she doesn't seem to be reacting to it. today I tried banana mashed up with the rice cereal and she ate most of it. She did throw up a small amount, but had no other reactions. I might be pushing the solids too much with her getting over a stomach bug, but it is challenging for me to be getting up multiple times at night to feed her.  I have started to think that her GERD is becoming more of an issue and might try to put her on medication. I want to wait just a bit longer though, because I rather not put her on medication.

Axel, on the other hand has had a great week of sleep and has slept through the night 4 nights in a row. If he continues this week he is going to get to camp out in the pinball room with daddy. I hope that he succeeds, because I think it would be a fun experience for him. You will have to check back next week to see if he was successful.

 Phoenix is such a funny little girl. She wants to grow up so quickly and do everything that brother does or any other kid for that matter. Here Pheeny is at 7.5 months trying to ride brother's first scooter bike.

She is just a little too short to sit on the seat and completely touch the ground. I am sure within a month she will be tall enough and have it down pat.

 Phoenix and Axel continue to "play" more often together. Axel is really great with her most of the time, however, there are more moments than I want to recollect where he is just all over her and her space, taking away the toys she is playing with. It is mostly for attention and I am hoping this is something that he will grow out of quickly!

 Phoenix loved this drum that Axel use to play with when he was younger.

 She had a ton of fun banging it as brother was busy stacking these plastic blocks. The funny thing about this picture is that I got the blocks out for Phoenix and the drum out for Axel and they both were interested more in what the other person had so they nicely switched. They played long enough for me to get dinner started.

 This random picture is because I was so incredibly excited that the one somewhat ugly/boring succulent that I had suddenly flowered. How awesome that even the succulents that don't possibly look like they can flower, produce a flower. This particular succulent was the one given to Grandpa Bruce from Auntie Shannon's wedding. I thought it was nearly dead several times, but magically it came back. Actually this entire pot of succulents are all from Auntie's wedding. Beautiful, huh?

Speaking of Auntie Shannon, we had a nice short visit at her house yesterday. We went to celebrate her birthday, which is today. As Uncle Ryan said, she was celebrating 30 for the 6th time this year :) Her and Braylin are doing great. Happy Birthday Auntie.

Yesterday, we also had our new babysitter start. Both kids did great with her and Axel loves having a babysitter. He is really excited that Genna will be coming every Saturday morning for a few hours. Keith and I are even more excited that we will have 3 hours together every week and more family time the entire weekend.

Phoenix has mastered going from stomach, to crawling to sitting to climbing over objects. I can't seem to catch a video of her doing this, but here is how I found her when I set her down in the kitchen while I was doing the dishes. She is starting to have a lot of personality.

I tried to capture an updated picture of the kids together, but I wasn't very successful. This was the best that I could do.

 Here is a prime example of Axel wanting to take away the recorder from Phoenix, but giving in to sharing it :)

 This afternoon we had fun family time playing in the park. Axel is getting really good at hitting the ball. You can see he has a great natural swing.

 Phoenix also had some fun playing in the park as well.

 Here is my last attempt for the day to get a cute updated picture of the two of them. Axel pushed Phoenix backwards, but atleast they are both smiling!

Pheeny stands and crawls quickly!

Watch out for Phoenix cruising and walking soon!

 Here she is pulling herself up from standing.

Here Phoenix is happily following mommy after waking up from her nap!

Sibling Fun

Written on Monday, Sept 2nd

This past week went by especially fast as my three days of work ended with me picking up Grandma Susan from the Amtrak station in San Jose at 9pm on Wednesday night. On Thursday, I had promised Auntie Shannon, that I would head up to Oakland to get her set up with the breast pump I loaned her. I thought it would be a bit much for all four of us to head north so Grandma and Axel stayed home while Phoenix and I went to Oakland. I am a bit bummed I didn't get any pictures of baby Braylin, but good thing is both Braylin and Shannon are doing well.

Grandma had a great time visiting with Axel and Phoenix. She was even able to feed Phoenix. Phoenix started back on solids on Monday. She kept down sweet potatoes Monday through Wednesday so I added butternut squash and carrots back into her diet on Thursday and Friday. She still isn't eating as much as she used to, but good thing is she is mostly keeping it down. I am hoping in the coming week she will be back on track so she will start sleeping almost through the night. She has been waking up a couple times a night, which is rough on me with Axel waking up once a night. Axel slept through the night last night, for the first time in weeks, so I am hoping he gets back on track. Axel had almost slept 10 days in a row through the night until a couple of weeks ago when we had the special blue moon. It was such a spectacular sight that I thought it was worth waking him. It was only 8:50pm when I woke him. He was back in bed by 9pm, after seeing it, but unfortunately, that ruined him for almost two weeks with one to two wakings a night, until last night.

Last Sunday I was able to climb up Montebello. It was absolutely gorgeous at the top. It was so breath taking that I had to stop and take a picture. For those of you who know me well, I never stop to smell the roses because I always feel time crunched to get a thousand things done every day. This is why I love to ride my bike....time alone in God's amazing creation!

Since Phoenix has started crawling I decided to get little plastic containers to store all of Axel's little legos. He absolutely loves organization.

Since Phoenix started crawling a week ago she decided that she wasn't quite satisfied with just crawling. She has been trying to figure out how to get to standing.

We try to get outside to play at night still. Sometimes we are able to play with one of the neighbors, but most nights now it is Keith, Axel and I. Axel's new thing to do outside, that he learned from the new neighbors who moved into Max's house, is how to flip over while holding onto my hands. I tried to teach him this a few months ago, but after seeing Caitlyn and Ethan do it, he did it right away. Grandma joined us for one of our outside night adventures while she was here. She had fun watching Axel and I try to do some gymnastic moves.

Here Grandma Susan is feeding Phoenix. She was so excited to be able to feed Phoenix. Good thing Phoenix ate!

Written Saturday Sept 7th.
I have been slowly getting some of Axel's toys down. One that was an absolute hit was his push wagon. Although Phoenix doesn't know how to push it yet, brother decided that it would be an awesome game to push Phoenix. This is great for two reasons. One, Phoenix is relatively safe in the wagon and I don't have to worry about her falling while trying to stand and cruise and Axel is entertained. This allowed me to get dinner started the other night. They had fun and I got something done!

Last Sunday Keith and Axel were playing on going to the Lego Convention. Unfortunately, there was mis communication between Keith and I and tickets were not purchased and the event ending up being sold out. Instead, Axel and Keith went to Axel's first ever movie at the movie theater. They went to see Airplanes. Axel did great for the most part. He was a bit afraid during the storm and they left 10 minutes before the movie ended, but all in all, they both had a great time. 

Phoenix is absolutely my child and never wants to sit still. Over the past week Phoenix has mastered crawling, going from her stomach to sitting and pulling herself up to standing.

She has also started to let brother know when she wants her space and to continue to play with what she is playing. I was excited to get her first push on film :)

The new toy of the week that she has been playing at both Angela's and our house it the activity box.

She mostly likes to play with it standing. Here she is cruising around to the other side.

Yesterday, Axel and I got his tent and tunnel down. It only took her a minute to see Axel go through before she tried herself. She absolutely loved it!

Phoenix had more immunizations on Thursday to get her caught up. She refused solids all day yesterday until she saw me eat a banana. She recently reacted to cooked peaches. Absolutely discouraged I decided not to follow the allergen list and to just give her a quarter of my banana. She loved it! I am going to try again to day and hopefully she will not react. We are hoping for the best!

Tomorrow I am training a new babysitter who is older and has more experience. We are excited because we are hoping she works out. She has committed to watching the kids every Saturday from 8:30-11:30am until next summer! This is going to allow us to have a lot more family time together and Keith and I will have three hours of date time per week! Check out the next blog with Phoenix videos.

Pheonix is crawling!!!

It's official....Phoenix is a mover and a shaker. She has been showing the signs of crawling, and yesterday she put it all together. Granted it was slow and partially combined with the military crawl. I am sure,though, within just a few shorts weeks she will be zooming around the house. 

Today she wanted to practice sitting all day.  It is exciting to see her develop quickly. The only bummer thing about this stage, which we were sadly reminded about, is the falling/ hitting head stage. 

Yesterday was the excitement of what you see below and today was the reminder of the difficulty of letting Phoenix develop, but at the same time providing a safe environment for her. Both Keith and I will be excited to get past this falling stage, but for now we will try to enjoy the good parts of seeing all of Phoenix's firsts.

 I forgot to mention that I went cold turkey on the swaddling again on Thursday. We are at day 3 of no swaddle for naps and bed time. It is going a bit better, although she can take up to an hour to put herself asleep still. I hope she will develop new sleep associations soon and that I won't cave in and reswaddle her again :)

Axel continues to love school. The teachers are very impressed with how articulate he is and can't believe his vocabulary level. Both teachers have come up to me to tell me how much they love having Axel in their classroom. We are extremely proud of Axel and are excited for him as he begins the next chapter in his life.

 Axel has made his first friend at school named Ethan. Madison, Axel and Ethan eat lunch together and play together when they have their outside free play time. We went to a picnic party for parents and students last night and Axel did a great job of playing with all of the kids on the play structure without any hesitation. It is amazing to see him come out of his shell. It is like I have an entirely different child.

Tomorrow holds more adventures and Grandma Susan comes to visit at the end of next week so please check back soon!

Axel's first day of Preschool

Axel started Preschool at Marshall Lane Elementary where he will be attending Kindergarten next year. We signed him up for Mon, Wed, Friday from 8:15am-1:15pm. For his first day of school Keith and I arranged our schedule so that we could both take him. We were a little nervous at how he would do before we started the enrollment process. After enrolling him, attending parent orientation and then 'meet the teachers for the kids', we were sure he would be fine. He was really excited to be going to 'real' school. I had been calling daycare, school, since he was a baby. He realized over a year ago that he was going to daycare and not real school and he was looking forward to the day when he would be attending real school.

 The enrollment process was a bit pain staking for Keith and I because of Axel's skin and his allergies. There was a ton of paper work, medical release forms and prescriptions to get as well as special food for Axel, but with only a few hitches everything magically got done and Axel was able to attend school yesterday. We were extremely proud of Axel and both can't believe he has reached this milestone in his life.

 We live across the street from the elementary school so walking is the only real logical way to get there. Traffic backs up quite far on the roads leading to the school parking lots. Keith and I feel fortunate that we are just a 10 minute walk and don't have to deal with the ciaos of driving. We are also fortunate that his daycare provider will take him and pick him up on the days that I work.

 Axel had a great time yesterday and couldn't wait for Wednesday to arrive. He said he only made one friend, besides Madison, a girl that also attends his same daycare. Unfortunately, he couldn't remember his name, but plans on asking him again tomorrow.

Although I will miss seeing Axel's smiling face all day, I am excited about having a few hours alone with Phoenix almost every Friday. It will be great one on one time!

New Tricks, New Games, Birthday Party and Babies

The past week has been action packed as Phoenix is in the mist of achieving several milestones, and we were all waiting patiently for Auntie's baby to arrive. I packed up the swing for Auntie Shannon and put the exersaucer in its place. Phoenix knew exactly what to do. She immediately starting walking and playing with all of the fun toys. 

The exciting thing for Axel and I was setting up the electronic tree. We placed pictures inside the peek a boo section of Axel, Phoenix and myself and hunted around the house to find 4 AAA batteries. Phoenix isn't quite old enough to push the buttons on the one side, but today she was pulling on the green cloth that covers the pictures. To my surprise the tree talked back to Phoenix every time she pulled one of the cloths. The cloth over her picture said "mommy". The one over Axel's picture said "Daddy" and the one of my picture said "Baby". So cool!!! I had no idea it was interactive. Now I need to change the pictures so the words correlate with the pictures. I had never placed the batteries inside the tree when Axel used it years ago. Too bad because I think he would have loved the musical, interactive tree!

Phoenix absolutely lights up every time she sees Louis. She becomes very talkative and follows him with her eyes. Before our walk a couple of days ago she scooted right up to him and grabbed his lease, just like Axel use to when he was a baby. Today she even walked him holding onto his lease while I had her in the carrier. Axel use to love to do this as well.

Phoenix has been practicing all of the steps to crawling. She is rocking back and forth on her hands and knees.......

Pushing up into the plank/push up position....

and bringing her knees under her. She has sat up a couple of times from her stomach by pushing up and then bringing her left leg under her all the way until she is on her butt! The only bummer thing is today she discovered how to use her arms to pull herself forward on her stomach. This military crawl is what Axel started doing at 7 months and stuck with until he was a year. I am hoping she will still practice her pre-crawling skills so that she can quickly crawl on her hands and knees instead of just doing the military crawl. I think regular crawling will give her more freedom and independence to chase after Axel than the military crawl will. I know Axel got frustrated and went right to cruising.

Phoenix's sitting is also much better. I still get nervous that she will fall so I like to stay close to her or put the boppy pillow behind her to soften her fall backwards.

We picked up the game Operation this week. Keith and I have been talking about purchasing this for awhile. We both really enjoyed this when we were kids and Axel, no doubt, is starting to enjoy playing it as well.

Yesterday, while Phoenix was sleeping Axel and I built a cool house for his dinosaurs using his foam letters. I was really proud of our creation so I made him pose for a picture.

Yesterday evening we went to another birthday party. We weren't able to stay long because Phoenix has not been feeling well. She refused solids yesterday and threw up 3 times at the party. So after the third time, one hour into our visit, I told Keith and Axel that we needed to go after the breaking of the pinata. Axel had fun hitting the pinata, but wasn't very excited that he had to leave early. He met a young girl who he had a blast playing with and was bummed that he had to leave early.

Yesterday morning, Saturday, July 17th, Auntie's baby finally arrived around 1am. Braylin was a very healthy 8 lbs, 10 oz and 20.5 inches tall. Both Auntie and Braylin are doing great and were discharged this morning from the hospital. The 4 Szolushas, went up to Oakland this afternoon for a quick visit. Braylin is absolutely adorable and the Jolley's seem to be adjusting quite well to their new addition. Phoenix continues not to feel well and through up all over Auntie's house just before we left. We are hoping it is just a small stomach bug, but Keith and I both are skeptical and think she is having a reaction to the asparagus we started earlier this week. We think it is the food because she has had an eczema flare and green stools the past couple of days which is a sign that it is most likely a food she is reacting to. Our plan for this week is to do a couple of days of no solids and then try again with the foods she has been tolerating well since we initiated solids 1 month ago.

Axel starts preschool tomorrow morning. He is very excited, as are we. The preschool is very well organized and run and we are looking forward to seeing Axel grow socially and are optimistic that he will be stimulated academically as well. Check back soon for a post on Axel's first day!