Happy birthday baby Munkey!!!

It's so hard to believe that it's been a full year since that amazing little boy first graced us with his presence. I'm still in awe that one little kid could so drastically change your life (for the better, of course).

He's getting better and better about standing and walking. While holding onto something, he can stand for a long period of time, and walk around where he needs to get to. When he lets go, he only gets to stand for a second or two before he falls, but he's getting the hang of it.

He's adding more and more words to his vocabulary every day. The newest ones are "water", "bottle", "cup", and "Wigley". He's also mastered when to use "dada", "mama", "yeah", and especially "NO!!" He's also working on "love you" and "thank you".

Mikey's ball-playing skills are getting sharper by the day. Regardless of the size, he catches them when rolled to him, and rolls it back with no issue (get your minds out of the gutter, all you 12 year olds...). And, much to Nathan's delight, he is showing left-hand dominance.

His pediatrician appointment is today, so I don't have updated size specs yet. When I get them, I'll revise this...

His whirlwind family visit-filled month went well. He finally got to meet his Aunt Andye and Uncle Tony (Nathan's sister and brother in law) as well as seeing his MeMaw and PawPaw again. He also got to meet his Aunt Jill and Uncle Larry finally. And today is the last day of Lavern's week-long visit.

While Lavern is in town, we get to go out to dinner every night to places we normally wouldn't go to. For example, the other night we all went to a hibachi steakhouse. Mikey thought it was a riot, and ate every single thing in site.

His birthday party last Saturday was a smashing success. To everyone who got to make it there, thank you so much for joining us. To those that didn't, you missed a great time. He had so much fun, and made out like a bandit.

New photos are up at the Ofoto site. If you need access to it, shoot me an email. And since I haven't gotten a chance to finish the conversion from the Snapfish site in full, that one is still active.

Thank you to everyone for sharing in Mikey's first year with us. It's because of you that he has the best extended family that a Baby Munkey could hope for. We love you!

-- Ali

(p.s. - if this sounds like rambling, please forgive me. Ths is the fourth time I've had to type this. Someone kept distracting me, and making me accidentally delete this. Grrr...)