Happy New Year!

Basti is 17 months old, and as goofy as ever.  Got me laughing at lunch with his antics and I snorted water out my nose at a restaurant.  Classy Mommy!  Poppy certainly didn't help by imitating Basti's funny face.

Basti thinks it is funny to sneeze, especially because Poppy sometimes pretends to sneeze with an object on his head so it will fall off.  So now Basti imitates Poppy and tries to put random things on his head (often food) to have them fall off and laugh.

For New Years Eve we had a quiet celebration at home.  Once we got Basti into bed, we prepped the meat fondue and popped the fancy champagne.  I got quite buzzed on just 2 glasses, and passed out a little after 10 pm hugging Maja in bed.  Zzz...

Basti finally decided to start walking on Sunday.  He walks around randomly for longer and longer stretches.  He knows he is way faster crawling so after a bit walking he ends up on all fours again.  Several of his pants have ripped holes on the knees from all the crawling.  And once he discovers the holes in his pants, he rips them even bigger.  So for the longevity of his pants, I hope he starts walking more soon.

Updates on the most important events of Basti's days:

Sleep: He is more consistently sleeping 11 hours straight at night.  Which is great for everybody, but I still wake up sooo tired.  If he sleeps less than 11 hours, he wakes up tired and cranky.  He just went through a week of only 1 nap a day.  Today he's on nap 2.  It all kinda depends on how early he takes his first nap.  But he can usually stay awake for 4 hours in the morning before his first nap.

Eating: This comes and goes.  Sometimes he will eat anything in sight.  Other times most of his food ends up on the floor.  Sometimes I let him graze...  he explores the surrounding areas and I randomly feed him bites here and there, instead of having him sit in the high chair throwing everything on the floor.  It is all trial and error.  He has finally started sipping on milk.  Sometimes I mix it with yogurt and/or fruit for a snack smoothie.

Ah, December 21 was the first day Basti was officially fully weaned.  YEY!  And no tears!  The whole process took several months, and was delayed a bit by having visitors and going on a trip, but we made it.  Got Poppy to greet him in the morning and rock him to sleep so he wouldn't be reminded of cuddling with me on the rocking chair.  Now I need to watch how much I eat (even though I'm always starving still) so I don't gain too much weight!

Pooping: He started drinking a little more juice after Thanksgiving, so I have been offering him a little prune/apple juice every day to keep things moving.  And so far it is working to keep him going every other day.  At least I think that is what helps.

Which brings me back to the Thanksgiving trip, we drove 6.5 hours south to Pasadena.  The long car ride was actually ok.  Since we drove at night, coinciding with Basti's bedtime, he slept most of the way.  Woke up when we stopped for gas, pee break, or Maja (she was getting a little uncomfortable on the way down so we stopped every 2 hours, but she was much better on the drive back).  With all the excitement and commotion of people and new surroundings, Basti coudln't settle down for naps while we were in Pasadena.  So by evening he was extremely tired.  At one point he started banging his head against the floor.  When we wouldn't let him do that, he tried banging his head against the furniture.  And when we wouldn't let him do that either, he started hitting his head with his hands.  Quite disturbing to watch.  For a few days once we got home, he was taking 2-3 hour naps (not the norm) recovering from the trip.  Yikes.  Also, while we were in Pasadena, Basti was on an eating binge, just shoving everything in his mouth, although sometimes he would have so much food he'd end up spitting it out.  Despite all the eating, he was not pooping.  So we tried giving him stool softener, prune juice, pears, etc.  Finally he pooped the morning of the day we were driving back.  He usually has 2 poops back to back, so the rest of the day I was on alert waiting for the second one.  Of course, once we were packed in the car driving away, not even on the highway and we smell it.  Nice.