Quick update

Sorry for the delay in posts. My computer of almost 10 years finally died. I am using the lap top that I acquired with marrying Keith that Axel spilled milk on, which equates to the keys sticking and the curser jumping around. So I will be keeping this post short in order to limit my frustration.

These pictures are all from 3 weeks ago. Here is Axel playing a new game he made up with Louis.

He had so much fun making Louis disappear and then reappear and watching the blanket move with Louis under it.

This is after about half an hour of playing. Axel decided to give Louis a big hug.

Axel tripped and fell during one of our walks with Louis 3 weeks ago and got his official first "owe". He was really excited to actually "need" a bandage.

You can see how happy he is here.

On Labor Day we headed up to San Francisco to watch Keith race. Here Axel is with our neighbor and friend, Kerry. He had a blast hanging out and cheering for daddy.

The past two weeks we have been hanging out trying to get things done around the house. We have a new faucet in the kitchen, so now I don't have to deal with a soaked shirt after doing dishes :). We also have purchased an HDTV antennae which allows us to get television for FREE. Imagine that! We are excited because we hardly watch TV, but now we can watch Universal sports and Keith can watch NFL games.

Tomorrow we are headed to Oakland to watch Keith race in the last race of the season.

Until next time, here is Axel in one of his silly moments with a play doh mustache.

Hopefully we will have a new computer in a week or two and I can get back to regular posts!

Terrible Two's

The title of this blog shows my frustration with Axel's behavior this past week. He is much better today, but this is after hours of shedding unnecessary tears. I do have to say that Axel's stubbornness is quite impressive. I knew he would be stubborn because Keith and I are both stubborn, but I had no idea how bad it was going to be.

Okay, what am I talking about. Well, the past two days I had to do one of the hardest things thus far as a parent.........I had to hold my child's door shut for nearly an hour as my two year old screamed his head off. The funny thing is I can't even remember why he was so upset or what the tantrum was about. All I do remember is that I had to keep my word and in the battle of wills I had to win to keep my respect as a parent. While I was sitting there feeling my blood boil and wishing my child would just give up and shut up, I realized that over the past week or two I had not followed through or had given in to choices that I had given him because I haven't been feeling well. And my blood boiled more because this was all MY fault. If I hadn't let him push the boundaries he wouldn't be testing me by trying to push the boundaries further. As agonizing as it is to hear your child scream, I prevailed by telling myself, I love him too much to let him win. And with God on my side I was able to show him who is boss, and that my word is my word. This was done without yelling, without lectures and without put downs. It was done by sticking to my word and following through. Why is that so hard? Why do we have such little backbones when it comes to those cute little things that we reproduce?

At any rate, I am proud to say that my sweet child is slowly returning. The yelling and hitting has almost completely subsided. He is also realizing that he has to make a decision out of the choices I give him and that I will not back down and give in to what he wants. Mostly because it is not good to have ice cream or crackers for lunch.

I forgot to mention last week about the potty training situation. Of course, I am like everyone else and forget when things are good. He has not had any accidents, day or night for two weeks, hence my forgetfulness. I think he was testing me by peeing during dinner the few times he did. Luckily, by not making a big deal about it, I believe he decided it is nicer to stay dry and go in the potty.

Now onto fun stuff this week. A co worker of mine has been passing down a two wheel pedal-less bike and it was my lucky turn to purchase it for Axel. I was so excited that he is finally big enough to "ride" one. I thought it would be really easy for him since he has a three wheeler with no pedals, but he was more afraid and timid then I expected.

Leave it up to daddy to get things started and Axel excited about something. Keith is so good about making everything fun. I have finally come to terms that I am officially boring compared to my counterpart :)

After having fun on the new bike, Axel jumped onto his old bike and started pedaling like he had been riding it his whole life. The cool thing was his feet finally touched and the bad thing was after just a few pedals his feet starting going in different directions. We were advised to tape his feet to the pedal to help him understand the importance of maintaining contact with the pedals. I think we are going to try that sometime in the next week or two.

Axel continues to grow founder and founder of daddy. Today he actually cried for daddy when I wouldn't let him have crackers for lunch. I reminded him that daddy would definitely not let him have crackers and that he should be excited that I am letting him have waffles with his hummus. Luckily, he realized I was right and we had a nice picnic on his picnic table in the backyard.

As Axel grows closer to daddy, he also is becoming more and more boyish. He absolutely loves his trucks. He also loves crashing his trucks and playing rough with tackles and all.

Axel also loves looking at himself and taking pictures of himself. The picture above is one that was taken with my reverse camera so he can see himself. He loves seeing his different facial expressions, "live".

Night times have also been rough with Axel not wanting to go to bed and having to go "poop" after his bed time routine is done. I think it is getting better and a phase that will pass shortly, so Keith and I are going to try to stay calm and sweet ourselves. Hopefully, the next post will only have good news of a child who eats what he is given and who sleeps when put to bed. It has been two nights in a row Axel has fallen asleep on the floor. Let's hope tonight he chooses to put himself in bed before falling asleep!

Until next time....have a great long rest of your weekend!

This week has been pretty low key. Keith found some ping pong competition from Cynthia, one of our close friends. So both Keith and Cynthia are looking forward to future ping pong "tournaments" at Tyler and Cynthia's house.

As far as Axel he seems to be in a huge growth spurt. I think that I mentioned last week that he has been eating quite a bit more than usual. Well, the eating streak continues which makes Keith and I happier than we can put into words. Having to struggle with food and getting Axel to consume it for over two years made us feel like inadequate parents at times. It seems we have turned a leaf and this won't be the case anymore. He is still picky, but he is becoming more open to trying new foods. Once he outgrows his dairy allergy (hopefully before he is 8 years old :) ) We will be open to a lot more family meals and food options for Axel.

While making waffles the other day, I found a perfect photo opportunity as Axel had his very first plumber's crack. He didn't even notice. He was just smiling away as usual.

This picture is for my lovely husband. He thought I was so funny when he saw it on my camera roll.

And here is a picture showing Axel scarf the waffles. I do believe he ate 8 mini waffles, which is equivalent to 2 big waffles in one sitting.

Keith and I continue to work in the yard cutting down our neighbors over grown "bushes" that are coming into our yard and covering lots of good sun exposure to our newly planted trees. While I was slowly chopping all of the branches into more manageable pieces for our yard waste container Axel had fun playing with our new boche ball set. I tried to play with him, but that only last about 5 minutes before I wasn't allowed to touch any of the balls :).

As I started to put the leaves and branches in the yard waste container Axel politely came up to me and asked, "Mommy are you going to squish the leaves now?" And then about 5 minutes later when I had squished the leaves down,he asked, "Mommy can I squish the leaves now?" So here you have Axel being a big boy and helping me squish the leaves down :).

Axel is playing more and more with Louis. He saw me throw a stick to Louis so he wanted to play tug of war with Louis. I get so proud when Axel takes the time to play chase, or feed, or pet Louis. I don't know why that makes me so happy, but it does.

Axel is still really into puzzles and stacking blocks and objects. He loves the blocks came he received from Keith's Aunt Lois.

He was so excited that he was able to balance all of the blocks.

Axel is still into music and loves to dance and sing. He can spend 30 minutes sitting playing with daddy's ipod. I have caught him both dancing and singing, but of course every time I go to record he him stops doing what he was doing and often asks, "can I see mommy?"

Thanks for reading. Have a good week!

Big Boy Bed

Last weekend was a busy weekend. Keith raced on Saturday while I went to a baby shower. Axel hung out with his favorite babysitter who happened to be having her birthday party that afternoon. Axel finally jumped in a jump house after taking over 30 minutes to warm up. Twenty minutes of watching Annika and her sister jump and then 10 minutes of sliding on his stomach, then crawling and finally standing. So I take it back. I am not sure if he actually jumped, but he did spend time in the jump house having fun. I unfortunately, did not get any pictures because I didn't have my phone on me when Annika came over and said that her jump house came 2 hours early. I left the two of them eating lunch and then I headed to the baby shower.

Once Keith and I got home we then went to Alex's one year old birthday party. Alex is almost the size of Axel. Normally they do fairly well playing next to each other, but Alex was so pooped out from all of the excitement he slept most of the time while we were there. Axel did play with a couple of other kids that were there which was really exciting. Daddy taught him how to chase after a little girl, touch her (tag her) and say "you are it". It was really fun. Eileen, the mom, had amazing food as usual, so Keith and I pigged out on home made Filipino food.

Axel was so busy playing he didn't do a great job of eating dinner so on the way home he wanted to eat some more hummus and crackers. Keith and I were talking away as Axel was enjoying his late snack. Here is a picture of what we found 10 minutes later.......so funny. We both tried our best not to laugh, but that was impossible.

Sunday Keith raced again and Axel and I went to the park. When Keith got home we all headed to babies r us where we ended up picking up Axel super fast race car bed. We were going to borrow our friends van, but with twins coming at anytime we decided to chance it and put the bed on top of our car. Good thing because they went into labor that night :)

We set up Axel's bed in the sea room next to his room so he would have the option of sleeping in his crib or the big boy bed.

Of course, he decided to sleep in the big boy bed. He did fabulous and hasn't wanted to sleep in his crib all week.

He did have a rough couple of nights/mornings because of the excitement of his big boy bed. He didn't quite get to bed on time and wasn't quite the morning person that he normally is.

Axel requested to have his bed put into his room so Axel and I had the pleasure of taking the crib apart and his bed apart and switching the furniture from the sea room to his room. Keith had to help me put the bed back together because the plastic was a bit too smart and awkward shaped for me to handle :)

Now Axel is happily sleeping in his big boy bed in his room and loving the big boy thing. He is officially eating in a regular chair, with regular spoons, forks, bowls, plates and cups. He continues to wear his big boy underwear and is starting to eat like a big boy as well.

His eating has improved so much in the past week or so I think he is in a growth spurt. He has eaten two bananas in a row on more than one occasion. He also likes apples and cucumbers now and eats them on a regular basis. He is eating nice big meals, however, he has stopped drinking fluids which is a little strange. He only drinks 8-16oz per day. I am thankful of this decrease in liquids since he continues to have a couple of full on pee accidents per week now. Hopefully, he will out grow the accidents thing in the next month or so. In the meantime I will have to be more patient and be thankful that the first 5 weeks of potty training were a breeze :)

Fairytale Land

Last Saturday, Axel and I visited Auntie and Uncle in Oakland. We went to Fairytale Land, which is just a few minutes from their house. It was so much bigger and better than the Fairytale Land that Axel and I had been to with Grandma Susan in Sacramento. It was really hard to get through the park in 2 hours. The one in Sacramento was easy to breeze through in about an hour.

Here are just a few pictures of Axel in Fairytale Land.

I love this picture because I love seeing Axel run, especially with a smile on his face. :)

Funny Man!

If you look really closely you will see Uncle and Axel in the train. The four of us went on it the first time and then Uncle took Axel on it a second time while Auntie and I enjoyed some yummy french fries!



New this week is Axel's desire to do everything with daddy and like daddy. It was the first time that I can ever remember Axel telling me "no, mommy. I want daddy to help me." I was super excited, especially because I was getting ready for work. When I was ready to go, I found the two of them in bed, "taking a nap", according to Axel. Daddy loves to take his time getting up and this is one of the first times I can remember Axel wanting to join daddy.

Axel has also gotten into the phase of undressing himself. I can't tell you how often Keith comes home and asks, "where are Axel's pants?" It would have been the same scenario, on this particular night, but Axel decided to go pee on a bush, while he was playing outside with Louis and accidentally peed on his shirt. So when Keith came home, he saw naked Axel sitting on his little bench outside eating cashews.

So when daddy convinced Axel to come in and get some clothes on, they decided to take funny pictures of themselves first. There are about 20 of them and Louis being silly.

Yesterday morning I surprised Axel with big boy plastic plates, bowls and cups that look like our nice porcelain dishes. Axel was so excited to use his big boy bowl that he decided he wanted a big boy spoon. Well, one spoon was not enough and he wanted to use my spoon and his spoon. As you can see he did a great job!


As usual I finished my bowl of cereal first and accidentally made a big deal of how great the milk tasted. I left Axel for a second to say goodbye to Keith and when I came back Axel was smiling from ear to ear, so proud of himself for drinking all of his milk too. He said it was easier to eat his cheerios with his hands if his milk was all gone. Silly Axel!!!!

On the potty front, this week has been interesting. I thought since a month has passed that we were in the clear, but for some odd reason Axel has had several accidents this week. He had two poopy accidents at school, which he hasn't had since day 4. He has also had 2 or 3 full on pee accidents where he makes a puddle. He hasn't done that ever. Even when we first started he would just pee a tiny bit and then stop and finish in the potty. The only thing that Keith and I can think of is that he is really tired and that is causing him to not pay attention.

Which brings me to the other news. Axel has stopped taking naps the past two days and has woken once the past two nights. Last night I believe he woke because he had to go pee and I had just had a conversation at nap time that even when he is suppose to be sleeping or in his crib that he can still call for mommy and tell mommy that he has to pee and I will come get him. Well, he did just that at 11pm last night. I was proud of him for doing so, but bummed that he woke up bright and early again. Axel normally gets about 12 to 13.5 hours of sleep per day and the past two days have only been 9 and 10 hours each, so I am hoping he sleeps well tonight and naps tomorrow and that is the end of this new accident thing.

Oh, the other big change is that he now only wants to use mommy and daddy's potty and no longer Mr. Froggy. The bummer about that is he needs help to use a regular toilet, so that also might be contributing to the accidents the past couple of days.

We are ordering Axel's big boy bed tonight.......a race car bed. The bed that Keith always dreamed of having when he was a kid :) Luckily, Axel loves cars and already has car cups and the car chair that goes with the bed, so we think he will love it too. I have shown pictures to him so there shouldn't be any surprises when it arrives.

We have an action packed weekend so checked back soon!

Winnie The Pooh

The new grass was finally cut after three weeks last Saturday. It was so nice. The whole family loves the new yard. Here is Keith and Louis playing in the yard before it was mowed for the first time.

Saturday morning Keith and I were able to go on a ride with his college buddies. We had a lot of fun, but Axel had more fun than us. When we returned we found Axel's hair up in a "pony tail" and a glow in the dark bracelet around his wrist. WHAT!!! Well, I still haven't heard the reason for the pony tail, but the bracelet is really cool because it does glow in the dark so I could understand why Axel liked it so much.

Axel has been fascinated with candles and night lights for about a year now. Every time we go into the "sea room" he always takes the whale night light and plays with it. Here he is in deep thought about his beautiful light, minus the fish attachment.

We had been struggling with dinner and bed time routine for the past few weeks. Luckily I finally wised up and decided to give the ultimate of all decisions. I told Axel he could join us for dinner or play with his toys. The catch was that if he did not eat dinner his movies were going to go away until he did eat dinner. The funny thing is he has eaten dinner all week without a fuss, but at the same time has not watched a movie or even asked once for it. I will definitely wait until he asks me to watch a movie.

I mentioned the Winnie the Pooh that Axel found at my Aunt Gina's house. Well Grandam Sonia fixed up Pooh's nose and mailed it to us. It arrived yesterday. I thought Axel would be really excited, but he just showed about 20 seconds of excitement and then went about whatever else he was doing at the time. However, when book time came Axel was really happy to have Pooh there to read with him while daddy read a Winnie the Pooh adventure.

Well, this morning the first thing Axel wanted to play with was Pooh. Axel also wanted to take Pooh on our bike ride and then he wanted to take Pooh into the grocery store.

When we got home from our ride and stop at Safeway we took Louis for a walk. I gave Axel the choice to leave Pooh at home or carry Pooh with him. He decided he wanted to take Pooh with. Axel made it to the driveway before complaining that Pooh was too big to carry.

So I gave him the choice of bringing Pooh back into the house or to continue on carrying Pooh. He decided to continue to carry Pooh.

Pooh eventually ended up on the park bench while Axel played in the park and Louis sniffed around. I was really proud of him for suffering the consequences. He did a great job of getting Pooh up and down from the bench as well as carrying Pooh home.

Axel continues to do well with the potty. He had his 3rd accident this morning in bed, but only 3 accidents in 3 weeks is much less than I expected for going cold turkey.

Axel started the "why" phase a couple of days ago. I thought for some reason this wasn't suppose to start until age three, but somehow we lucked out. We are all getting about a hundred "why" questions for everything. It makes me crack up when he asks "why" a dozen times for the same answer.

Last I leave you with a great picture of Louis. Louis is quickly approaching his 9th birthday in October, but still gets misjudged for a puppy all of the time.

Potty Trained!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. It is official. Axel is potty trained. I say it in the past tense because in just 12 short days Axel went from being asked and placed on the potty every 1 to 2 hours to going all by himself. This includes both peepee and poop, as well as naps and night time. We feel so very lucky and blessed that he picked it up so quickly. He has had two accidents early in the morning in his crib, but we have a great speed wash that is done in 25 minutes, so I am able to get his bedding washed and in the dryer before leaving for work. Not an inconvenience in the least bit!

It was this past Thursday, day 10, when I claimed Axel was potty trained. I was doing the dishes after breakfast and Axel was playing with his Blocks, when I heard him running and singing Axel go poo poo. By the time I reached the bathroom, Axel was already playing naked with his toys and his pants were on the ground and his poo and pee flushed down the toilet. I approached him in amazement asking if he went all by himself and he said, "Axel went poo poo and pee pee." How cool is that!!!! I love his routine of dumping out his potty and him placing it in the sink and then we wash his hands and his potty and he puts it back. I hope he continues with this and the initial fun and charm doesn't wear off.

Other exciting news is at a friends birthday party, Axel not only wished Lucia happy birthday, he also played in the water with all of the other kids. This was the first time since Axel's birthday that he has been okay with another person having a birthday. He now says, "Axel birthday is all over." and I say, "Until next year." And then Axel smiles understanding that it comes every year. This was also the first time that Axel has played in the water structure with other kids.

He also did it again at the park that we go to that has the same water structure. Unfortunately, this week he asked to go home after 15 minutes. I think he wanted to go home because he wanted to "go potty at home" and not because of the other kids, but I will have to wait and see next week. It is such a huge break through because Axel always gets intimidated by other kids and ends up just watching them play or going to a place in the sand where he can play alone in peace without the other kids running into him or pushing him around.

Axel's night time routine has turned into a complete nightmare since we came home from Chicago 12 days ago. He screams every night and wants to play all of these different games to extend his bed time. Luckily he is slowly getting the hang of the fact that we mean bed time is bed time and his screaming/crying only lasted a few minutes tonight.

Eating at night has also become a nightmare the past week or two. We put him to bed one evening without dinner, but ended up feeding him in his crib and then having him cry himself to sleep. We think he is slowly learning that dinner time means dinner and not playing. If it doesn't totally improve over the next week I think we will put him straight to bed without any food to see if that is the magic trick to get him to eat instead of goofing off.

Another big change is Axel no longer wants to be in his high chair. He now stands on a "big boy" chair and eats his meals. He actually asked me to put his high chair (that is really a booster chair) into the attic. He clapped when I came down :)

On a complete opposite note, he does not want to get a big boy bed. He says his crib is his bed, so I think we are going to have to wait a little longer before transitioning him to a big boy bed, which is fine with me if he keeps holding his urine all night.

Axel continues to get better at puzzles, counting and the alphabet. He recognizes a handful of letters and loves to "read" to me. He has also become a singer. He use to only sing at home, but now he sings at the grocery store and day care, which is fun for all to hear...especially when it is nice and loud!

Axel and daddy have really grown close over the past month or two. Axel is showing daddy a lot more affection and asks for daddy's help and time with him a lot more. It is really fun to see and I am glad that he is becoming less of a mama's boy.

Speaking of Keith, today is his one year anniversary of health. We are so happy that he is doing well and we hope he continues to be healthy for years to come. Thank you all for all of your prayers for him and please continue to keep him in your prayers.
Have a great week. Next up, is Keith's and mine 3 year wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe we have ONLY been married 3 years because I feel like I have been with him my whole adult life.....ok, maybe I became an adult 5 years ago at age 27 :)
They have been such great years.....and we have grown so much. May God bless us with more years of growth and happiness.