Mia at One Year!

Current Stats: 19 lbs. (25%), 30 in. (75%). Clothing size: 18 mo. Has 7 teeth, with molars emerging.

Believe it or not, Mia has just celebrated her first birthday! She had two parties: one in San Francisco with cousin Eleanor (born 3 hours after Mia), and one in SoCal. She had a great time celebrating with friends and family in both places! :-)

Mia is on the verge of walking and talking, and having fun exploring everything in sight. As of 6:06pm on 6/6/06, our little devil began crawling! She started at Marc & Lisa's house (our neighbors), and crawled to reach and chew on mommy's slippers. (Ewwwwww!) Since then, she has been steadily increasing her ability to move around, and by 12 months was crawling very fast on hands and knees. She can pull herself up on furniture and cruise around. We're having a great time watching her grow and learn.

Just before she turned 10 months and began crawling, Mia had her first photo shoot. Our family friend, Sandy, is starting her own photography business (www.sandyheit.com) and wanted to use Mia as one of her first subjects. The photos turned out fantastic, and you can see some of them in Mia's PHOTO ALBUMS.

Mia loves to laugh and play and give kisses. She is a sweet, funny, loving and smart girl. She is curious and creative and somewhat mechanically inclined. Give her a toy and the first thing she does is turn it upside down and look for the screws. Mia is a wiggle-worm and doesn't sit still for very long, but when she does sit still and concentrate, she's usually reading her books. She loves to pull her books off the shelf and surround herself with them. Sometimes she'll even sit on them! She goes through page by page, looking at all the pictures. Every now and then, she'll hand over a book so you can read it to her. You can imagine Mommy's pride (English teacher!). She also loves typing on the computer keyboard, and we hope she'll be providing technical support very soon.

Mia is still eating like a champ. She eats mostly table food (loves Japanese, Mexican, Indian, Greek ... everything!), and is great at feeding herself and others with her fingers. She is also learning how to eat with a spoon. She's drinking only 3 bottles each day, at mealtimes. All other times, she drinks water from her sippy cup. And she loves to share her food and water with whoever is feeding her!

Over the past few months, Mia has had visits from Tutu (Grandma) Jackie, Uncle Kevin, Auntie Carrie and Cousin Eleanor. She also spends time each week with Grandma Shirley, Bubby Sylvia and Uncle Marc & Fairy Godmother Lisa. She's also had many playdates with Sierra, Garrison, Alexander and her other buddies. For fun, Mia has been to a couple outrigger races to cheer on her Daddy, "sheep shearing" at the Santa Ana Zoo, the Long Beach Aquarium, Hullabaloo's Clubhouse-where she enjoyed the karaoke stage, Storytime at Barnes & Noble. Mia now says mama, dada, hi, bye, and yeah on a regular basis. She understands simple commands and questions like, "Get your sippy cup" or "Where's your football?" or "Give Daddy a kiss!"

To see pictures from her 10th, 11th and 12th months, see Mia's PHOTO ALBUMS.