Alphabet Weeks: Letter B

Perfect timing for out letter B week. Our little family took a trip to Corpus to visit family and friends! Enjoy...

Axel was able to discover the letter B while digging through the sand at Maggie Beach in Corpus with cousin Caitlin!! Lots of things were found including his buried FOOT!










The letter B was tasted this time with Banana's and toasted Bread (for the first time). Anyone who knows Axel is aware that the kid loves banana's!!

A new finding in our home was an empty Box that hadn't been recycled yet. Let's just say Axel had a fun time with that one including a brief game of peek-a-Boo!!





We continued our bath time foam words including Bat, Box, Band, and Bar.

Axel was given a Noah's Ark Little People set by his Aunt Susan for his birthday. What a perfect gift for the letter B. A couple of Bears and panda Bears! Axel is loving categorizing his animals and shapes into different containers. His 'big new task' in play is sorting. 

Lastly, as I said earlier our little family was able to visit some of our BEST friends and BEST family members including Cody, Allison, Madelyn, Ryan, Nanny, PawPaw, Aunt Nancy, Caitlin, and Chelsea in Corpus!!

What a bountiful, beautiful, and blessed week we had!!

Alphabet Weeks: Letter A

It's time! That's right...LeArNiNg TiMe!!!!

Axel is picking up so much information and developing so quickly...what better of a time to introduce the little kiddo to the alphabet. It is so much fun to be able to do exciting new things with Axel and also feel like he's being introduced to new information.

This week we started with the letter A. We explored the letter A through foods including apples and apricots. 

With those foods we experienced the letter A while working with our senses. PaInTiNg with apples!!!

We found the letter A in words with bathtub foam letters including Axel, Apple, At, Am, Ate ect.  

We also explored the letter A at different places including the Houston Zoo with the Amphibians and the Aquarium. 

Lot of fun was to be had with the letter A!!!!

Axel's 1st Birthday

Well here were are! Our little bean has turned 1 years old. Normally I would say I can't believe it, but I can! He has grown and developed so much. The changes just in the past month are remarkable.

I chose The Very Hungry Caterpillar as his birthday party theme, simply because I love the book. Axel enjoys listening and pointing to pictures as I read it to him. The colors and pictures are simply great. We were able to celebrate with family and friends.  He had a blast and slept very well that night. Fortunately, we found out that Axel does not like cake and sugar! YAY for his parents!!!!

Here are some pictures that capture the day!

Life As We Know It...

As you can tell, it has been a while since I updated the blog. Lot's of exciting things have happened in the past year. For a quick run down we'll do this in a list format:

-I changed jobs to working with Abuse survivors; primarily children.
-Kyle and I bought a house in Sugar Land.
-Kyle and I celebrated 3 amazing years of marriage!
-Axel went through 2 helmits and then completed his therapy.
-I changed jobs again and am going back to Small Steps working with at risk preschool children.
-Axel turned 1 year old!!

Kyle and I were recently talking about all that has happened in our life this past year. I jokingly said we would fail the stress assessment due to us having almost every major stressor on the list!!

The Tillman family is very blessed!!!

Home Run Stretch...

So here we go ladies and gentlemen...the end of my 36th week!

I'm thinking God is teaching me a lesson; a lesson of patience, peace, and trust. From the very beginning I have just had this internal feeling that little Axel is going to come into this world early. As most would say, this sounds like a wish!. Yes, it does and at this point it has become a wish. So much of a wish that I find myself anxious and constantly thinking about this little guy (when is he going to make his grand entrance, what does this and that mean, should we pack our bags already? ect.). I'm thinking this is usual, but it makes for a feeling of time creeping along...

Our way of handling this time is to fully put our trust in God and ask for patience and peace. Kyle and I have been very purposeful these last few weeks in spending meaningful time together and splurging a little more than usual doing the things we love - watching movies, eating our favorite foods, visiting friends, and treating ourselves by spending a little more money and time on our hobbies. As we say, we're preparing!

Update from our doctor:

- 1 cm. dialated
- effacing beginning, but not far along
- Axel is head down and has turned his body in place for delivery
- having a few contractions daily, but never consistently.
- Blood pressure and heart rate good!

So the doctor never mentioned our due date. At this point all she said was to call her when my contractions become more consistent (every 5 minutes for an hour) and/or my water breaks.

Just thought an update would be nice to hear and I will try to post a few more updates before Axel's arrival!!

Our Baby Boy's Name...

As many of you know, at the beginning of the pregnancy, Kyle chose for our baby's name to be a secret. Well, when we found out our baby is a boy we didn't have much of a secret because we didn't even have a boy's name chosen...only a girl name. After lots of time, we finally decided on a name. Then during my 6th month Kyle decided he didn't want to keep it a secret anymore so here we go...

Axel Austin Tillman

Axel (derived from Absalom in the bible meaning 'Father of Peace'): Kyle and I decided that an easier way to look for names is by meaning, not names themselves. We began looking at names that meant liberty. Didn't work. So then we chose peace as our second important meaning and we immediately loved and agreed on Axel. Wow...it still puts a huge smile on my face to think of us choosing this name together and how much the name and our baby Axel already means to us! What a great experience.

Austin (meaning 'great, magnificent'): This is Kyle's middle name. We decided when we found out we were pregnant that our child would have one of our middle names. The meaning fits perfectly into the whole name!

There you go!! We took months deciding on a name and we are very excited to now meet our baby Axel!

I pray that he learns from his name and treasures his name and the place his name comes from.

Easter and 29 weeks pregnant

 EASTER

For Easter this year, Blondie and I were able to go to Mom and Scott's lake house. It was such a relaxing trip, neither of us wanted to come back. Blondie actually was carried to the car by Scott because she did not want to leave the door of the house! lol As you can tell in the pictures the wind was so strong that no boats were out and Blondie couldn't go swimming...Scott's new golf cart was great to drive around and sit by the lake in! BTW, Mom was able to feel our active little baby move for the first time today! What a joy and blessing!!

29 weeks pregnant:

Things went very well this week. No braxton hicks and lots of movement!! It's crazy to think that we're at that point now where doctor's appointments are every other week, so we only have one more week and we get to hear his heart beat again! This is always a very exciting time for Kyle and I both. Here are some pictures of the lake and of the baby and I.