Thank you Gram!

This post is a belated thank you to Gram! As Mia's daycare is still closed while they move locations, Dan and I were without anyone to watch Mia for 2 days last week. Thank goodness, Gram came to our rescue! Gram drove up on Wednesday and even arrived in time to make us some yummy enchiladas for dinner. Since I worked Wednesday night and Dan worked and had a meeting after school on Thursday, Gram woke up with Mia in the morning and put her to bed that night. They even made a trip to see GG Fay and Boppa Wayne that day. When I woke up, I played with Mia for a while and Gram made us another awesome dinner. It was hard for me to go back to work Thursday night because I just wanted to stay home and hangout with Gram! I did go to work Thursday night and Dan went to work Friday morning, so once again, Gram watched Mia while I slept. On Friday night, Dan, Mia and I took Gram out to dinner to say "THANK YOU". Mia enjoyed showing off her walking skills and reading with Gram. Mia and Gram read so many books and Mia discovered her new favorite book...Animal Sounds! I think we read that book about 20 times a day! Mia now even tries to "Moo" when she sees the cow! We are all so lucky to have our Gram!!

Mia's on the move!!

As I mentioned in the previous post, Mia took her first few steps on Christmas Day. Since then, she has been becoming a little more stable each and everyday and now she is officially walking on her own. For the last week, Mia has been walking across the room and now around the house. As you can imagine, she is so proud of herself! It is pretty funny to watch her walk around because she is still so tiny! She doesn't look big enough to be able to walk, but as we have discovered throughout the last year...amazing things come in small packages!!

Mia's 1st Christmas!

The Christmas celebrations continued on Christmas Eve as we traveled to Discovery Bay to have dinner with Grandma Sandy and Bill. Mia was able to meet Uncle Ray (Bill's brother) and Donita (Ray's wife) for the first time. We were also joined by Uncle Kevin/Michelle/Kaiya and Auntie Steph/Dan/Louie. Mia enjoyed teaching Kaiya how play with the toys on her new Baby Einstein Saucer, but her favorite activity of the evening was going up and down the stair to the kitchen. Mia climbed the stair with ease and discovered many ways to go down the stair...feet first, head first, army roll, etc. For her present, Mia got Elmo Live, which is an Elmo doll that talks and makes gestures. After presents, Mia changed into her Christmas jammies and we drove home.

We were so excited to have Mia wake up on her first Christmas morning in her own crib. Doc and Gram arrived at our house before Mia woke up so they were able to see Mia when she came downstairs to Santa's surprises. Mia finally started understanding the idea of opening her presents as she unwrapped her stocking. In her stocking, Mia got a book, some ribbons for her hair, and many other little presents. Santa's big present for Mia was her ride on bumble bee. It is a really cute little bee that is on casters so she can push it or ride on it around the house. It has already provided hours of fun...she loves it!! Mommy and Daddy got Mia a Pottery Barn chair that she loves as well! She has enjoyed climbing into the chair to play and then climbing back out of it on her own. Something very exciting happened on Christmas morning...Mia took her first steps!! Dan and I sat on the floor a few feet apart from each other and Mia was able to take a few steps going back and forth between the two of us. It was very exciting and we even captured the moment on video!!



For lunch, we headed to GG Fay and Boppa Wayne's house to celebrate the holiday. Mia was the only baby there that afternoon and she enjoyed all the attention of her relatives! After lunch and presents, we headed home for naps and relaxation. Our Christmas celebrations lasted a week and we traveled over 10 hours, but it was great to share Mia's first Christmas with everyone!!

Christmas in Redding

We had the first of our 3 Christmas celebrations this weekend at Papa Peter and Grandma Shelly's house in Redding! We left Roseville as soon as Dan got home from work on Friday and made our first stop at the Target in Woodland when we realized that we forgot Mia's travel high chair. With all the good eating she's been doing lately, we didn't want to mess with things so we figured we'd just buy another :) Mia was so good on the trip and basically slept the whole way. Mia defintely has one bad habit...everytime we put socks on her, she pulls them off and proceeds to crawl around with the sock hanging out of her mouth. She also does this at daycare and we know she must have a hiding spot at CA kids where a pile of her socks reside because she never comes home with the socks we send her in...maybe they'll find them when they move next month. So why so I mention this habit now? When we put Mia in the Tahoe, she had 2 socks on, the photo below was taken 15 minutes later...

We all had a great time in Redding, especially Mia! As soon as we arrived, Mia was crawling and pushing her walker around the house smiling! She loves to show off her skills! On Saturday we were joined by Aunties Steph and Shawna and Uncle Dan in the morning, followed by Shawna's friend Ryan, and finally Uncle Kevin, Auntie Michelle, and Cousin Kaiya! Mia LOVES to hang out with her family! Saturday night after an amazing dinner, we opened presents in our "As Seen on TV" themed gift exchange. We decided on the theme last Christmas and it was a blast! The gifts included the ShamWow, Turbie Twist, Hits of the 80s CD set, PetZoom pet hair remover, AquaGlobes, Debbie Meyer's Green Bags, Barack Obama's "Historic Victory" commerative plate, Pancake Puffs, and best of all Urine Gone. I have never laughed so much during a gift exchange!! After the gift exchange, the babies went to bed and we went to the casino. We were lucky enough to have Papa Peter watch the girls and to have Grandma Shelly drop us off at WinRiver Casino! It has become a tradition to dress up in Shelly's Christmas sweaters and head to the casino. Despite all the funny looks we got, we once again had a great time!

Mia enjoyed all of her Christmas presents, especially the LittlePeople's School Bus!!

Gavin takes Mia for a ride!

Mia has been a walking machine lately! Although she is not able to walk on her own yet, she has become quite skilled at pushing her walker around the house and neighborhood. Mia and our neighbor, Gavin (16 months) have become big buddies and are now able to play together outside! Mia and Gavin push their own toys around, but really enjoy trading their toys. Gavin has a ride on fire truck that Mia loves! She has learned to climb up onto the seat and Gavin has taught her how to push the buttons to make lots of noises. The cutest part of all is when Gavin pushes Mia around on the firetruck...they both love it! We joke with Gavin's parents (Josh and Tracy) that we are going to save the photos and bring them out when Gavin takes Mia to their prom...with housing prices the way they are, we are assuming we'll still be neighbors 17 years from now!!

In regards to our last post, we are so excited because one of the girls that takes care of Mia at CA kids has offered to watch her while they are closed!!

"Oh No!"

Those are the only words that I could vocalize last week when I found out that we are going to be without childcare for the month of January..."OH NO!!!"

Mia attends California Kids in Rocklin which is a wonderful daycare down the street from our house. Due to Dan and my untraditional work schedules, it is very difficult to use a standard daycare because our needs change every week. CA kids is a drop-in daycare that charges by the hour and is designed for parents who don't need full time daycare. It is also nice because they are open until midnight on the weekends!! The facility first opened right before Mia was born and Mia first went when she was only 10 weeks old! We love it there and Mia seems to enjoy her time there. The staff tell us all the time how much they love "Baby Mia" and how much they have enjoyed watching her grow up...so now the problem...

California Kids is moving to a new location and will still be very close to our house, but they will be closing the existing location on Christmas Eve and not opening the new location until sometime in February...YIKES!!!

So what does this mean for our family??? Thank goodness that I convinced Gram to retire, because she will be coming to stay with us for the first week in January (THANK YOU GRAM!!)
Aside from that, I am just planning on being exhausted for the remainder of the month. I am lucky that I have such flexible jobs (yes that is plural!), so I think I will be OK. I will just have to watch her a few mornings after working all night, but not on days where I would have to go back to work that night.

So if Dan and I are slow to blog, sleepy, or grumpy next month, please give us some slack, we will be doing the best we can!!!

Thanksgiving Continued...

So sorry for the long delay in posts...we have been so busy!

When I got home from work Thanksgiving morning, I went to sleep for a few hours and awoke to more visitors. Mark and Monte made the trip from San Francisco Thanksgiving morning and hung out with Dan and Mia. We then headed to the GG's house for Thanksgiving dinner (My Grandma Fay and Boppa Wayne). We were joined by my dad's entire side of the family. Mia had so much fun playing with her cousins, including her second cousin Brooke! Mia ate a great Thanksgiving dinner and was able to enjoy all the same foods that we did!



On Friday morning, we went bowling with Roger, Mika and the girls. Strikes is a new bowling alley down the street from our house that has some great new features. For the little ones, the bumpers rise and then go down automatically when it is their turn. This feature made the game enjoyable for all!

After bowling we headed to El Dorado Hills for our annual Friday night Thanksgiving Dinner with Shelly's family. We look forward to this meal every year not only for the good company, but for the amazing food they serve. We were not disappointed this year!!! Mia had fun playing with the other kids at the party, although they were much older than her! Mia also enjoyed the second of her turkey dinners sitting beside her Papa Peter and Grandma Shelly! Mia even wore her My First Thanksgiving bib that Shelly provided.

As if we hadn't had enough action, we headed to Apple Hill on Saturday for another of our annual events...wine tasting! Along with Papa Peter, Grandma Shelly, Kevin, Michelle, and Kaiya, we drove to Apple Hill and enjoyed an afternoon of wine tasting and a picnic at Jack Russell Brewery!

Although we were so exhausted from our many days full of activities, Kevin, Michelle, Kaiya followed us to Roseville when we were done wine tasting. We all felt the need to have a little break from the kids, so we came up with a great idea. We put the girls in their PJs, wrapped them in blankets, put them in their strollers and walked them to Mia's daycare, California Kids, which is right down the street from us. They do drop-in daycare by the hour and are open until midnight on the weekends!! After settling them in, we continued down the street to the bowling alley, where we ate some food, drank a little beer, and bowled a few games! When we picked the girls up at 11:30, they were both wide awake and happy! Apparently each of them had slept for 30 minutes and then were wide awake! Oh well, we all had fun!!! It was a great way to end all the craziness that Thanksgiving brought!