a Mina-chan Birthday!

Let's start this blog off with some serious T.M.I. (that's "too much information" for you non-slang types).

Mina is done nursing.

She's over a year, so obviously it shouldn't be sad, but wow! I found myself simply not ready to let her go into toddlerhood. Since my dental surgery, however, I've been on a lot of pain meds, so I had no choice. I spent her entire first year complaining about what a hard baby she was, and what does she do? She grows up, and no longer remains my baby!

 Oh Mina, you know your my special girl! I love you so much.

So now that I'm full of nostaligia,

Let's get our Mina-Blog on!

Let's start from her Birthday and go backwards, shall we?

MINA TURNS ONE YEAR OLD:

Above is one tired Momma. Mina has yet to sleep through the night more than a handful of times. But what a beautiful girl it produced. She still looks 100% "Grandma Thora Youngberg"- but today in church I realized her eyes, especially her eye lashes, those must be Daddy's.

I have this weird thing if I don't want to hold an official birthday party I invite friends over for a "potluck" and half way through announce it's actually a birthday also. Ha. I'm so weird. But it's one of the only ways I can keep people from bringing presents and for me to not stress out.

Mina still got spoiled by my friend Hiroko-san though. She loves this puppy, but it dances and sings so it took the puppy a moment to gain Mina's trust. (Robots can be iffy, I don't blame her).

Above is Hiroko, her twins, 3 year-old, Marie and Marie's best "older kid" buddy.

And after everyone left we united Idaho, Alaska, and Japan in a 3-way birthday chat!

(Love that Ipad Facetime!) It was fun that my parents could talk to each other and us!

Marie was going nuts with all this technology. And I couldnt get a great picture, but Mina is excellent at Skype and Facetime. She's even training to talk on the phone. Anytime she can get her hands on a phone (toy or real) she dials, speaks, and hangs-up. She's really quick. I'm impressed constantly with how fast she picks things up. She already likes to doddle on paper. Maybe she wants to be a journalist.

One thing that she has done wonderfully is EAT. She will EAT VEGETABLES, fruits, whole grains, soups, broths, juices, shakes, and anything and everything. The best part is I don't have to stress about not giving her fruit, because she'll still eat vegetables.

I'm glad Marie was my "sleeper"

And Mina is my "eater." I like how they each chose one thing to do extremely well. I wonder if they did a paper rock scissors tournament in heaven. I wonder who lost.

Oh wait, this cake lost. Sorry cake. We peeled off the fondant for mina and let her hit it a few times, but she just wasn't too interested in it. Don't blame her, cakes are just for looks.

Well here is to more blogging about the Mina babe!