2 days until Axel is 2

Sorry for the delay in posts, but we have had a very busy week and weekend. I will keep this short because there are still several preparations needed for Axel's birthday party on Saturday. We are also having a little day celebration on Thursday. Daddy is taking a half day off work so we can spend time together and make sure Axel has a great 2nd Birthday. Tomorrow the festivities begin at day care as they celebrate his birthday. I just got done making pumpkin muffins for the party tomorrow. Daddy made the third dairy free pumpkin pie last night so Axel is completely wired after having a piece of pumpkin pie and a pumpkin muffin for dinner. I know!!!! but what can I say....I am a sucker.....and I really like to see him stuff his face with food. He hasn't been that great of an eater for very long so it is still such a joy to see him enjoy eating!

Ok, lets back up to last week. Axel is still super cute, super funny and super clever. He has such a huge imagination. Here are just a few of his made up games.

King of Louis blanket!

Crawling and hiding from Louis under Louis' chair!

Axel snacking with bunny while making sure Louis is behaving....."Louis get back in there", Axel said :)

Axel playing cards..or keep away from mommy :)

Axel mowing daddy's camping mat and mommy's yoga mat.

Okay, check back soon for Axel's birthday post!

Yaahhhhh!

The count down until Axel's second birthday continues. Just 10 more days to go! We are so excited. In preparation for the big day 2 dairy free pumpkin pies have already been made and consumed. Here is Axel pigging out with daddy. Of course, he had already finished a piece that was nicely put on a plate, but when daddy got home Axel wanted more and this is how daddy served him. Fun times! This past week I finally had a chance to have Axel try on his new underwear. I think they fit quite nicely after washing them. These are the ONLY 18 month diapers on the market. I got a whopping 12 pair for $45 online. I sure hope we get good use of them! We have actually stopped trying to potty train Axel. He threw too many tantrums at school so we don't even mention it anymore. Axel continues to ask to go 1-4 times per day when he is at home. He often likes to use the potty for his morning number 2 business when he wakes. We are trying to be supportive when he wants to go, but I don't really ask him if he has to go during the day. So when I put the underwear on him I told him that he had to tell me when he needed to go poopy or pee pee because we don't pee in underwear. He did great. He told me within 30 minutes that he had to go pee. He finished and then asked for his diaper to be put back on. He is sure one smart cookie.......when he wants to be. Here are two pictures that show how Axel really wants to wear his underwear! Axel has started to get the hang of basketball. He doesn't like to actually let go of the ball unless it is in the basket, but who doesn't want to make a slam dunk every time! He doesn't even need a ball to play basketball. Anything will suffice, even bunny! Axel accidentally got an early birthday present because I wasn't very smart with the opening of packages sent from Grandma and Grandpa Burgess. Axel got a glimpse of these sun glasses and immediately started saying, "Axel sunglasses", as if he knew they were meant for him and a perfect fit!
Axel has been consistently eating much more than he use to. He consumes a thousand calories nearly every day. With the huge increase in food consumption we are hoping his weight and height will reflect this at his doctor's appt in 10 days. I know he has to be taller because most of the 12 month pants are too short. I finally managed to put all of the 12 month clothing away so that he is only wearing 18 month clothing. I am hoping the 18 month clothing will get us through the summer. We may have to pull out some of the 2T stuff later in the summer, but that will only be a positive thing!

Axel also continues to sleep well at night. He slept 10 hours this morning, asked for milk at 5:30am and then slept in until 8:30am. I think this is a first. I think I mentioned him sleeping in until 8:15am about a month ago, but never until 8:30am!. The best thing about this morning is that he did this on a weekend so Keith and I got to lie in bed! I would say sleep in, but I don't think either of us were actually sleeping, since we are so use to getting up early!

Last I leave you with Axel yelling "Yahhh!". This is one of the many wonderful things that daddy teaches Axel when mommy is riding her bike. Axel put this in good use today as he got to individually cheer on mommy and daddy riding in the rain today.

Axel at Work

Axel continues to want to do everything himself and do everything that daddy and mommy does. I was checking the weather and work email, when Axel interrupted and had to do work. "Axel work mommy!"

I believe I mentioned that last week Axel missed his nap and decided to play in his crib. He did the same thing on Thursday and Friday this week. The only difference was he threw all of his toys off, took his socks off and tried to take his sweat shirt off.

It is moments like these I try not to laugh so that he doesn't think I am approving this behavior. However, I am finding more and more moments where my lack of self control is evident as I bust out into a laugh. I am sure as he gets older and the cuteness factor goes down I will be able to be more firm :)

Axel can now climb in and out of his high chair. He often likes to stand instead of sit. Here he is king of the table.

He is becoming more brave and more into independent play. I love to see him exploring the backyard, among other things :)


His imagination is also taking off by leaps and bounds. It amazes me what he thinks of. Here he is sitting on his "outside" chair on the bench on our deck eating his snack. I was quite opposed to this, but the chair ended up being more stable than I first expected.

His imagination leads to a lot more 'pretend' play. We pretend eat all of the time. Weather we are playing with play-doh, sand or his stuffed animals, we are always pretending to eat.

Axel is often funny man like his father. Here he is pretending to be daddy with his hat.

And here he is pretending he has no arms.


But most of all Axel continues to act like a "two-year old". He has fun, explores his surroundings, is always learning and absorbing his surroundings and most importantly figuring out social skills by trying to "get his way". Here is a great example. I wanted him to wear a hat to protect his face and scalp from the sun. He really didn't want to wear his summer hat. After trying and failing to get dad's winter hat over his summer hat, both hats ended up on the ground. I gave up after several attempts and decided it was almost nap time anyways!

Speaking of nap time, Axel is back on track the past two days and is taking his naps! The lack of nap taking was a huge blessing because we bumped his bedtime up one hour on Friday night because he was so tired so the transition last night was flawless. Axel has been sleeping 11 hours straight again for almost two weeks with one or two hiccups.
Have a great week!

Daddy Hug, Doggy Walk

Daddy and Axel had lots of fun the past week, so much so that Axel cries for both of us now. I absolutely love the sound of Axel saying, "Daddy hug". It is music to my ears. This morning the two of them cleaned up the garage, worked on the bikes, and "fixed" our fence that is falling down, while I got to ride my bike. It is so great to see the two of them having so much fun together. Axel loves tools. Tools of any kind, whether they are bike tools, or a regular old hammer Axel wants to fix it with you. You can imagine how crazy he was when Grandma Susan sent him a new sweatshirt with tools on the front. He didn't want to take it off, even though he had another long sleeve on and it was almost 70 degrees out. It was one of those times I didn't put up the fight. If he wants to suffer and over dress because he likes his shirt that much, go right ahead and sweat! He also loved the "race car" shirt that Grandma sent with the sweatshirt and jeans. He is really into doing everything "fast". We run fast, ride the bike fast, and race the car fast.
Daddy sets up a circuit in our living room and he pushes Axel really fast in a circle around the circuit. Sometimes he goes so fast he falls off. Hence, why Axel wears his helmet in the house :)

Axel is still totally in love with Louis. He loves to take him for walks. Here is a video that super daddy was able to take while walking Louis AND watching Axel....quite a feat.

Daddy was also able to get a few short clips of Axel going down the slide.....he is such a big boy now overcoming a lot of his fears. I had other cute videos to download, but they aren't working....blog spot is a nightmare for downloading videos. Oh, well.

We think Axel is cutting his first molar. He is constantly chewing on his fingers and he is asking for things to chew and bite on. Today he didn't nap. He played in his crib for an hour and 40 minutes. I finally gave up and took him out of the crib. The funny thing was he didn't cry. Yesterday, it took him 45 minutes to fall asleep for his nap, but he still managed. I hope the molars down take FOREVER to come in like his other teeth. Axel officially has all of his teeth except his molars. The last ones are still coming in. I think they have been working on their full appearance for 6-8 weeks already.

In the potty training department, Axel is doing great at home. He started going poopy in the potty yesterday and has gone two or three times since. He continues to pee in the potty 3 to 4 times per day. He is still going through a lot of diapers because we still haven't ordered underwear yet. All of the on line stores are out of stock of the 18 month old underwear. I am hoping it might be easier for him to understand the whole use of the potty if he isn't in diapers.

At day care he has only used the potty once. He screamed all last week "no potty" every time they tried to put him on it. My hypothesis was that he is intimated that all of the kids line up to go at once and that he has to sit on the "big potty". I am going to bring a small potty tomorrow so I hope that helps him feel comfortable there.

We are going to try for another couple of weeks and if he continues to refuse to use the potty at school then we will wait for a few months. I am not sure how we will stop him at home since he loves to go. I think it is more of a game right now to him, but hopefully he will catch on once he starts wearing underwear. Besides, I am done with the whole washing diaper thing!

Alright have a great week. I hope that second video posts!

Axel is 23 months!

That's right! Axel is 1 month away from turning 2 years old! It is hard to believe that time has passed so quickly. The big news of the week is that Axel decided he only wants to drink from strawed sippy cups and that Axel is just a week or two away from starting his new adventure with potty training.

First, the sippy cup thing, which is not a big deal, but still another change in his ever changing world. Here he is concentrating on putting the straw together. The potty training thing is a very big deal. He seems completely ready. He can hold his urine, he knows when he has to go both number 1 and 2 and he enjoys using the potty at times. This past week he has been going pee 3 times per day on his potty. The only bummer thing about this is he only wants to use the potty when I am changing his diaper. I can't seem to get him to break his play to go. He actually yells "no potty", if I ask him if he has to go while he is engrossed in playing. This morning I changed his diaper first thing, like always, but I knew he would have to go poop within the next few minutes. He told me he had to go poopies, but he didn't want to go on his potty. He wanted to play with his puzzles. I brought the puzzles and placed them on the big toilet and sat him on his potty so that he could do the puzzles while going number 2. Well, he threw such a fit that daddy got out of bed to make sure everything was okay. So, he refused to go and then he refused to put a diaper on. I was okay with the no diaper thing, as long as he went in the potty and not his pants. Well, I continued to ask him while he was playing and he continued to respond no. As soon as I left his side when daddy woke up and came to play Axel said, "water". there was this puddle of water coming from Axel's foot. That is weird I thought...Axel is completely dry and the puddle didn't smell or look like urine on the towel. 5 minutes later Axel said water again. I came back into the room not only to find another puddle, but I smelled poopies! Axel!!!! I couldn't help but laugh at this situation. I was laughing so hard, that Axel started laughing at me dumping his poop from his pajama leg into the toilet. We went straight to the bath tub. The floor, Axel and the tub were all cleaned in no time, but the thing that worries me is if we go cold turkey with no diapers during the day, what is going to change, that is going to get Axel to go to the bathroom, instead of continuing his play? I am sure day care will have the answers. They said they were going to start in March, so that could be this week, next week or the following week. We will just have to wait and see. On the topic of potty training. Can you believe that only one or two brands carry 18 month sized underwear? And no stores have them in stock. I have to get Axel's underwear on line and pay $10 for 3 pairs, plus shipping and tax! Outrageous! 2T underwear are for kids 28-32 lbs. 18 month underwear are for kids 24-28lbs. Axel is 20.5 lbs. I know that Axel is not the smallest kid who has ever gotten potty trained so what do other mothers do? So, I am not sure if you read the news, but apparently we were suppose to get the worst winter storm since 1976 to hit the bay area. Well, the storm fell short of what they promised. Yes, it was cold, low 30's, and yes it snowed down to 500feet elevation, but the winds and rain were nothing like they promised. It was sunny and in the 50's by mid day on Friday and sunny and mid 40's on Saturday, which was suppose to be the "horrible storm". Sooooo disappointing. I guess Keith and I are going to have to work to get Axel to see snow. Maybe next year we won't be so lazy and will take Axel up North.
Here is Axel playing in the water on Friday. It was suppose to be a down pour. Can you see how beautiful it was outside?

Anti-Social or Really Smart

We started off the week with a talk from daycare telling me that Axel is still not integrating very well with the other kids. "He is almost 2 now and he should be transitioning to playing with the other kids instead of independently", I was told. Apparently, during story time he is in another room reading his own books by himself. I was told that he does sing along when the other kids are singing, but he does it from another room. They have actually tried moving Axel to the other room by picking him up in the chair he is sitting in, but this only leads to him throwing a tantrum about how he wants his chair back at the table. So now they let him do his own thing and hope that he will grow out of this alone phase.

As the week went on, day care said that he was starting to play better with the other kids and is going outside more. Every time I go to pick him up he is either at the table with all of the kids doing the same activity as they are or he is outside playing by himself/watching the other kids play. It seems every week I am told the same thing....by Wednesday he is super social and Monday and Tuesday he is more of a loner.

This Wednesday I was told how smart Axel was. I guess he is one of the only kids who calls everyone by name. Most of the other kids call "Angela", "mommy" because Angela is too hard for them to say. Well Axel started calling Angela, Angela and now calls everyone else by their name as well. X Speaking of talking....Axel is talking up a storm. It seems as if he is always talking, which is definitely helping the tantrums. He still wants his way most of the time, but he is starting to learn screaming and crying about it isn't always the best way for him to actually get what he wants.

Last week I mentioned about no longer going into Axel's room at night. Well, it was a success. After just a few days he is back to sleeping between 10 and 12 hours straight at night. If he does wake I just let him cry himself back to sleep. this has really helped improve his eating during the day. He has become such a good eater the past week. I am hoping this will be the norm and not just do to a growth spurt. I feel like I have a normal kid now. He eats about 4-5 times per day about 200-250 calories at a time. Before he was only eating around 600 or 700 calories a day and then wanting milk once or twice a night. It is soooo nice to have a kid who sleeps AND eats.

Axel continues to love books. Here are some cute pictures of Axel reading.

Axel is really getting into pretend play. Here he is cooking.

Axel got a new book called 'Zoe's Hats', at the library. Here he is with his yellow hat on.

Well, I did not bring the camera to the grocery store, but I was able to get Axel to do a quick shoulder dance while we were reading the other night. Enjoy!

Tantrums and Silly Times

As we are approaching Axel's 2nd birthday his desire to do things on his own and have things go his way is becoming more and more evident. I have LOVED parenting up until a week ago. I am not sure if it is because I am soooo tired, but these screaming fits about EVERYTHING are taking a toll on me.

Last night, there was a struggle and wrestle match to get Axel's pj's on. He picked them out, but wanted a different shirt that was in the dirty clothes. After this wrestle match came dinner. He wanted hummus and crackers but wouldn't eat it. He was so mad and frustrated that he decided he wanted waffles with the hummus, but I didn't cave in. He already had 4 chicken nuggets and I wasn't about to go for a 3rd item for dinner. After letting him know it was time for bed he finally decided to eat the crackers and hummus, but with my assistance.

One minute he wants mommy or daddy to do it for him, while the next second he wants to do it himself. Tonight he cried and cried as he tried to open the freezer door. "Axel open", he said over and over. He just wasn't strong enough. I kept asking him if he wanted help. Of course, he protested and cried harder. Finally after explaining to him how hard it was to open for mommy I grabbed him and pulled him as he held onto the handle for dear life. Boy, was he excited when "he" opened the door.

After getting reassurance from another mom I decided to go cold turkey again with getting up at night when Axel is crying. He was quite sick and was getting up 3-5 times per night for sometime. Well, he is nearly 100% and was still getting up one or two times per night. On Friday night he cried for nearly two hours, after I went in to give him the milk and hug he was crying for. Well, no more! I gave him a big lecture on it before putting him to bed last night. He actually did quite well. He woke around midnight and cried for 30-45 minutes, but the crying never escalated to screaming like it usually does. I put in my ear plugs and luckily fell asleep, hence why I don't know the exact wake time.

Tonight he tried to play this game again. I gave him the same talk to let him know if he wants to drink milk he needs to do so now before I leave the room. He insisted he didn't want anymore and that he wanted to go to sleep. Well 5 minutes later he decided he wanted more milk. So I let him cry for 20 minutes just now, but luckily, I did not cave in to his "milkie" cry. He seems to be asleep, but I assume he is going to wake tonight. I am hoping within a few days he is back on track and sleeping his usual 11 hours straight. Looking back he has only slept through the night once in the past 5 weeks!!!! No wonder why I am grumpy and tired!!!!

Now on to the cute stuff. He is absolutely a funny kid. He dances and shakes his shoulders like you wouldn't believe. We go grocery shopping weekly and nearly ever week in whole foods he is rocking out to the music. I absolutely crack up laughing because the kid has rhythm and it is the cutest thing ever. I wish I had my camera to take a video of it. He is also a huge jokester. Last night he was hiding his "fish" behind him in the bath and then he would ask me with a huge grin on his face, "shark go?" "crab go?".

One of the funniest things he did this past week was put "lotion" on his face like mommy does. Here is the first gob of Vaseline.

I had to help instruct him to spread it on his cheeks, which he happily did.

I was laughing so hard by then that Axel started to imitate me and "crack up" as well.

He also took a bite out of the pizza dough we made Sunday night and then started to act like he was joking on it.

Of course he wasn't and then decided to happily eat the piece he bit off.

We had a nice relaxing Valentine's Day and hope that you all did as well.
Again, sorry for the lack of pictures. I will try to do better!

I leave you with Louis sleeping in Axel's chair while Keith and I watched a movie. Keith decided we need to get one of these for Louis' room.