Mia is 17 months old today!!

At 17 months, Mia:

-walks well and runs
-can climb up stairs, and down stairs backwards on her belly
-sometimes uses sign language to communicate; she knows the sign for cat, dog, bird, horse, frog, cracker, water, milk, more, eat
-can say a handful of words (mommy, daddy, nana for Nick, hot, cracker, cookie, cat, doggie, water, Kyla, bye-bye,bird, baby, bath, bottle, flower, elmo, ba for Babcia)
-eats pretty much anything except for bananas
-loves dogs, but is still sometimes afraid of our cat (who, by the way, is a very mellow cat and has never harmed her)
-looks for her brother when she wakes up in the morning
-loves being on daddy's shoulder
-has a lot of special friends at Nick's school (one is Nick's friend Ayden who keeps saying that he wants to trade his little brother Nathan for Mia and another is Abbie the teacher who was also adopted)
-loves playing in the backyard
-stays at home with a part-time nanny, Maria, for one or two days a week so I can go to work (she is ok with the daycare at the gym only if she has one on one attention)
-is not afraid to express displeasure with something
-is not shy and makes friends easily
-drinks 2 bottles/day (she could probably give them up right now, but I enjoy rocking her while she takes her bottle....we missed out on so much time with her)
-is still easy to put to sleep; she goes down for 12 hours at night usually without waking and now only takes one nap of 2 to 3 hours