Birthday Excitement - One Year Old

Birthday Party at the Central Park Zoo. It was a perfectly sized zoo for impatient little kids, and we still saw loads of animals, like bears (Betty and Veronica), some speedy king penguins, seals, puffins, ducks, even a snow leopard

Petting animals with Willem

Eating Masi's amazing whipped cream and fruit cake.  First taste of the wonders to come.

Thank you all for your lovely gifts.  Mina will enjoy each of them in many many 20 second intervals.  We put all the presents in gigantic boxes to make an enticing pile and covered them in some (unfortunately sad looking) balloons.  She got so excited about opening the boxes she climbed right on top of them. 

Things Mina is doing:

• Eating like a horse - she will eat anything in astonishingly large quantities.  She is currently 17.4 lbs but consumes over 30 ounces of formula, 2 ounces of food, and 1 ounce of snacky stuff a DAY. 
• She said her first word a few days ago.  No, it was not mama or dada. It was "oval". "Obul", actually, and she did it a few times too. 
• She is crawling, cruising, and is now gaining the confidence to stand without support.  She'll stand up in the ultimate Warrior pose (knees bent, back straight!), stretches her arms out to each side, points her spoons outward like samurai swords, and breathes out: "dooooh". 
• Not sprouting any teeth.  I'm pretty sure they are going to come in all at once.