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We started the year with a mellow, warm day. Heavy fog rolled in in the morning and afternoon, but otherwise we had a sunny day. We all woke up early: we had a nice breakfast all together, and then aunt Cinzia, uncle Sandro, and cousins Naraiana and Samuele got ready to leave. They had quite a drive: all the way to Death Valley. They wanted to get an early start, so they leaft before 10 am. It was sad to say goodbye, but we are happy we had these days to spend together.

I am ready to play…wake up mom and dad!

The rest of the day was quiet. We took a nice drive up the coast, which was quite beautiful, with the afternoon  fog rolling in, and the surf crashing on the beach. A nice way to test the new car seat: fortunately, Keegan seems to like it quite a bit. He gets very excited when we put him in it, probably because he can now finally see outside the car rear window. Thanks to its deep recline, he also likes taking naps in it, so it is a win-win situation. did I mention it looks awesome in Tizi’s car?

enjoying some sun on our deck

with mom, overlooking the canyon

climbing on furniture is fun

The house was very quiet, and even Keegan noticed it. And finally after he was in bed, we had a nice, romantic, new year celebration, just the two of us. Happy New Year! “Let’s hope it is a good one, without any tears”.

Matt had to go back to work on Friday, but Keegan was very very good. He woke up at…drum roll…7am, and he was in a good mood all day, despite being cooped up home most of the time. The weather really deteriorated, it was gray and cold, and even drizzling. Dad came home early, so we could enjoy a long weekend of family time. And enjoy we did. Keegan slept till 7am every day, and he was in a great mood overall. We set up our frog tent in the sun room on Saturday, since it was gray and rainy, and we had some fun in it…especially Tizi. She loves that thing. She actually drove to two different stores to find it. It is awesome. Fortunately Keegan likes it too.

the uber-cool frog tent

Saturday was sunny again, even if a little windy, so we celebrate Keegan’s 13th “birthmonthday” by going to the beach for some fun in the sun. Keegan slept while we lazily strolled on the boardwalk, but he was ready to play when we got to the sand. He was walking everywhere, particularly enjoying climbing up sand dunes.

We are grateful we had such a good start for the new year, and we are definitively counting our blessings (with all the necessary knocks on wood, to avoid jinxing it), especially after having a close call on the way to the beach. As we were preparing to turn left with the traffic light green for a couple of minutes inour direction, someone came flying through the intersection from the left, running the red light and almost hitting us and another car. Thank God Matt had such good reflexes and slammed on his breaks, and we didn’t have anyone behind us, so we were all OK. But if the car would have arrived a few seconds later it would have hit the driver side where both Matt and I were…it was a big scare, but again made us grateful for all that we have.

In other Keegan’s news, he has been sleeping till 7 am every day since Friday and he has been a good eater as well: he ate tofu, lots of tomatoes, chicken soup with pasta(homemade by daddy), pineapples, some spinach, mozzarella cheese. He does not like melon, for some weird reason, and he would only eat past in a soup. He even started drinking his morning milk from a sippy cup. He is not too happy about it, but it is a start. He only gets one bottle, before bedtime, but other than that he is using his cup, with or without the sippy top. We are cutting down on formula as well, replacing it with cow milk that he seems to tolerate quite well, so far.

Finally, he seems to understand us a lot more. Besides the meaning of NO, milk, food, he now seems to understand some simple phrases. For example, if we tell him to bring us a book to read together, he would go to the books’ box, pick one up and bring it to us. Or if we tell him it is bath time, he will light up and walk to the bathroom. It is really exciting to see.

During the whole vacation, but especially in the past three days he was a “perfect”, happy baby, even playing on his own for a while.

…we thoroughly enjoyed this stage as temporary as it may be, but of course we missed him a lot as we both got back to work on Monday.