Cheese Monkey

So many updates on Basti's developments, I can't keep track.

Right after we got back from Germany, Basti started sleeping through the night...  average of 10.5 hours straight.  Nice!  But once he turned 13 months, he started waking in the way early morning.  Now it's anybody's guess what he will do...  For the last few days it has been difficult getting him to sleep at night.  What's going on Basti?

His appetite comes and goes.  Sometimes he'll sit at the table for an hour continuously shoving stuff into his mouth, other times everything ends up on the floor with one swoop of the arm.  One day he loves grapes, the next he just throws them off his tray.  But one thing is pretty consistent...  he is SO messy.

Sometimes he will purposely sneak food under his tray to give to Maja.  Caught him throwing stuff behind his back too!  Or there are times he will just aim for her with a piece of chicken.  And then there's the double chew method...  he puts a bunch of stuff in his mouth, chews a bit, spits it out, sorts it, and puts it back in his mouth.  He's learned to eat corn on the cob, not typewriter style like me yet.  Ha ha.

Basti has figured out that shaking his head side to side means no.  Started doing it when trying to feed him something he didn't want.  Sometimes it sounds like he says no also.

I've stopped giving Basti the stool softener, he manages to go on his own now.  Although there is a bit of straining...  he more often poops when he is eating, so he will try to stand up on his high chair and I can tell it's that time.

One thing he definitely shouldn't be putting in his mouth is paper.  But he always manages to grab some stray piece of paper and rip it and put it in house mouth.  I know he has paper in his mouth when he looks at me and grins like this:

And then the real fun starts trying to get it out of his mouth.  Sometimes I just let him chew on it for a bit and he will spit it out on his own.  Now he likes to sneak into the bathroom to unroll the toilet paper roll, rip it up, and scatter is as he commando crawls away.

Basti is able to entertain himself for little bits of time here and there.  He'll sit quietly flipping through books (often they're upside down and he's going backwards).  His clear favorites are books with flaps, but sometimes he has a hard time opening a flap and then it ends up torn.  Oops.  He is also starting to want to climb onto everything, he is still not big enough to get onto the couch on his own.  But he surprised me by climbing onto/into/over a hamper.

He is also learning by imitating us, which is pretty cool.  When he feels like it...  he'll put toys into containers, or drop balls into his tumbling tower, make noises, etc, etc.  Maja and Basti have been playing together, pretty cute to see, but always with supervision.  They play "swap the toy", where Basti grabs a toy and Maja takes it, so Basti grabs another one, which Maja gets too but drops the first toy so Basti can go get it.  And then they play ball, except Maja doesn't know how to throw the ball back, so it's a work in progress.

The coolest development happened last week Friday, when he figured out he could walk forward by pushing his little car.  It's best he does it on the carpet, as the car goes too fast and slips on the hard floor.  He's still kinda wobbly, but practicing.

Basti and I made new friends at the local library baby time.  Baby S is 2.5 months younger than Basti and he lives just a mile away from us.  So for the last few weeks we have been getting together on impromptu play dates...  and with unpredictable babies that's the best way to go.