Oh Christmas Tree

This whole month has been filled with lots of Christmas fun. Mia has been enjoying her first Christmas tree. Surprisingly, she doesn't seem to have too much interest in it but loves the ornaments when you bring her close up to the tree. We are well aware that we have gotten a break this year and next year she will be much more interested.

Mia received an early Christmas present from Auntie Erin...a pink tutu. Although it was an 18 month tutu, mommy couldn't resist and pinned the tutu to fit so we could play in it now. As you can see, she is practicing for her upcoming lessons... :-)

One of Mia's favorite things in this world is her daddy. She just loves her daddy. We went into uptown to have lunch with daddy and to see the Bearnstein bear orchestra play Christmas music. Whenever Mia sees something slightly out of the ordinary (such as 4 foot mechanical bears singing and playing music...she says "ooohhh" over and over. It's really very cute.

We keep getting the question...."is Mia crawling yet?". The answer is technically no. She is much better about playing on her stomach and gets into the crawling position. She moves herself slowly towards her desired location by doing an inch worm move lifting her butt in the air and then propelling herself forward just a little bit. Cruising, however, she is a pro at. She will pull up and then calculate the best way to get her destination using couches, coffee tables, walls, etc to get there. In the picture below, she had started off holding the slats on her crib and ended up over on the side wall to check out (much to our dismay) the phone jack behind her bed as well as the electrical outlet. Breaking news today is that she is walking by herself while holding a push toy in front of her so maybe we will have a walker before you know it!

9 Month Check Up

Quick update....we just got back from Dr. Richter and all went great. Mia is now 16 pounds 5 ounces and 28 inches long! She is still "small" for her age but her height is great so the doctor is not worried about it because obviously she is getting enough calories.

We are ready to launch into the world of peas, meat, and assorted finger foods. And...we are going to try out some Yo Baby yogurt soon and see what happens. Maybe we can get off that Alimentum some day soon.

All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth...

I forgot to include this in the last post but we finally have a picture Mia's two bottom front teeth. Maybe for Christmas Santa will bring her her two top teeth!

Mia's First Thanksgiving

The Hanna clan boarded a Jet Blue plane to Boston for Thanksgiving week. Mia was thrilled with this experience and stayed up wired on the plane until we arrived at grandma and grandpa's house...at 12:30am in the morning mind you. She was a trooper and bounced back the next day.

I have to admit that I was extremely nervous over the Boston trip due to our last trip not going so well. But this time everything was fabulous...despite Mia still getting over a cold. It was like Mia arrived in Boston and said "I"m a big girl now and I get this object permanence thing." She let almost everyone hold her without an issue. This is a HUGE deal as Mia has screamed since 4 months whenever someone other than us held her. Being "older" now, Mia and grandpa had a lot of quality conversations about the Patriots and, as you can see below, caught up on the local Middlesex news with grandma. She tells me she is joining the League of Women Voters next week (sorry...inside joke for GG).

Mia had time to catch up with her old friend Caroline. They discussed many things ranging from what Caroline has done at day care recently, to their other buddy Aidan, and their mutual dislike of tummy time.

Gearing up for Boston trips this winter also meant purchasing a Boston appropriate winter coat (versus our Charlotte winter coat). When Mia's coat arrived in the mail, we tried it on and she gave me this look like "mom is all of this REALLY necessary???!!!!". Little did she know that she would fit right in with the rest of the Boston ladies.

This week we are off to Mia's 9 month appointment so stay tuned for our new stats. I am going to try to be more like Nick's mom and post weekly updates from now on. I'll make that my New Year's Resolution! Have a good week and make sure you check out the new photo's and video's!

8 months old and loving it!

I can't believe it but Mia turned 8 months old last week. The time is flying by and before we know it we will be planning a 1st birthday party. Last week we had a fairly busy week, we went to story time at the library of course where Mia is obviously jealous of the other babies crawling around and gets up on her hands and knees to rock back and forth as to say "see I can do that too" but the second we get home she is like "crawling? mother I don't know what you are talking about." We also had two play groups, one with our DT friends and the other with the neighborhood babies.

Not to mention all of the shopping that we did for our upcoming Boston trip. I keep looking at the weather in Boston and I seem to think that Mia will be an ice cube even inside my parents house! But we now have an appropriate winter coat, mittens, a hat, and new shoes so we should be good to go.

Mia is becoming an expert "puller upper". She is pulling up on to whatever is within reach and now is cruising around her activity cube on her own. One day you could just see in her brain...oh if I put my hand here and move my feet like this I could get over there...hmmm let's try it. I have a feeling she will crawl and walk in the same week.

I leave you with this picture of Mia sitting in the grass for the first time. She ripped grass out of the ground and studied it and tried to put leaves in her mouth. Just a reminder to stop and appreciate your surroundings every once in a while. We are off to Boston on Friday....wish us luck this time!

I Love Mondays

I will profess that I love Mondays! Monday is one of the best days of the week primarily because of library story time. It's something which I look forward to very much because Mia enjoys herself so much. She loves watching the other little kids some which are younger than she is and others who are crawling around and pulling up on things. She sits and listens intently to the story teller and her favorite part is the bubbles signaling the end of the half hour. It gives me great joy to see her so happy and interested.

That being said last week, we went to a Halloween party at daddies work. Mia loved saying hello to everyone in her pumpkin suit (which I think she might actually miss going forward) and waiving twizzlers and mini m&m's in her hands. She also met up with her good friend Meredith sporting her lovely bee costume. My father commented that I had called it "daddies work" for the first time ever. And it was true, I had reached a real turning point of separation. I proudly walked in with my daughter on one hip and wearing jeans as to say "this is where my priorities lie and you can't take that away from me." It was a very liberating experience to be able to just not care at all about anyone's "busy season", etc, etc, etc. So hence, "I LOVE MONDAYS". I love being with Mia at home with her as my priority. It's a great feeling and I wouldn't change it for the world.

Updates: We are now saying "ma ma" when we want to get up and do something different or get out of her crib... I think she talked to Nick who told her this worked really well with his mom since he does the same thing. :-) She is now pulling up on her toys which is crazy given that she still wants nothing to do with crawling. And we are eating peaches and cheerios. She is growing up!!!

PS- Sam will upload the Halloween pictures tonight so look out for them on york photo soon.

Have a good week!

Catch up

So I have been a delinquent poster...sorry. There is so much to update everyone on. Mia now has her two front teeth although they are still too low to get a picture of them so stay tuned.

Uncle Meelad came to visit on his fall break. We had a great time. Mia and Meelad watched the game together. Mia is already a big Vols fan as you can see! We went to pick out pumpkins for Halloween.

It seems like every day Mia is doing or saying something new. She is more active than ever although still not crawling. She is babbling in sentences and has so much energy when she wakes up for the day or from naps. We are constantly looking for new ways to entertain her. A few of my favorite things that she has done lately: in the bath if you dribble water from a squirt bottle she tries to catch the stream of water to no avail, she tries to touch the wreaths on the wrong side of the glass front doors, gives you the biggest smiles when she wakes up from a nap, she LOVES paper, every new baby she meets she tries to touch their face, she says "da da" with semi meaning.

Sam and I have a new found freedom. We have discovered that Mia will go down for the night at someone elses house then we can put her in the car seat, come home, and she goes right back to sleep in her crib with no crying. We have been trying to take advantage of this and recently went to a Halloween party at Kristin and Patrick's house and dinner with Lisa and David. It's wonderful! As you can see below, Mia has gotten good use out of her Halloween costume. Her friend Maddy was thrilled by the sparkles on her witch costume.

Mia has been eating up a storm. She is now having carrot, sweet potatoes, avocados, butternut squash, summer squash, rice cereal, baby oatmeal, green beans, spinach, and today we started bananas....all made right here at home by mom! She is loving the solid foods and is finally gaining some good weight. We were at the doctor about a week ago (for an unscheduled visit of course!) and found that she now is in the mid 15's in terms of weight, which is great!

She is so steady on her feet these days that we think she will most likely watch before crawling or crawl for only a short period of time. It's like she watches us walk around and thinks she needs to do that instead of shuffling around the floor like regular babies.

Mia and mommy have been doing many activities during the week. We go to story time for pre-walkers at the library which she is a big fan of. We have a Wednesday play date with her friends Nick and Maddy. We go to the kiddy pool at the YMCA. And this past week we met a new friend and her mommy from CharlotteMommies so it looks like we may have another play date in our future. Not to mention, her friends Jill and Silas up the street who are now 4 months old. She is part of the Hanna family...so a heavy social schedule from the beginning is essential!

Ok, I think that is it to get everyone caught up. I will try to be better about posting every week in the future!