Problem with selecting a date from the db

I'm getting the hang of php a bit now, but the whole date thing still blows my mind. I have this code below that allows you to select a month, from a drop down box, and the selected option is always the current month. I want this selected month to be one already in the db from a time stamp. Here is the current code below, and below that the code I tried changing to, which of course does not work..

//-- Date --
// $monthname=date(\"F\");
$monthnum=date('m');
$yearnum=date('Y');
$dayname=date('j');
$daynum=date('d');


// mese
$mese=
  "<SELECT NAME=month>"
. "<OPTION SELECTED VALUE=" . $monthnum . ">" . $ndx_mese[((integer)$monthnum)] . "</OPTION>"
. "<OPTION VALUE=01>" . $ndx_mese[1] . "</OPTION>"
. "<OPTION VALUE=02>" . $ndx_mese[2] . "</OPTION>"

Code (markup):

<?
$remid = $_GET['remid'];

function db2me( $date )
{    
return date( "m d, Y", strtotime( $time ) );
}
if( !($result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM reminders WHERE remid='$remid'")) ): die("Cannot query mysql server");
elseif( !mysql_num_rows( $result ) ): 
printf("No records found for %s", $my->username );
else: 

$date_field=mysql_result($result,$i,"date_field");

//-- Date --
// $monthname=date(\"F\");
$monthnum=date('m');
$yearnum=date('Y');
$dayname=date('j');
$daynum=date('d');


// mese
$mese=
  "<SELECT NAME=month>"
. "<OPTION SELECTED VALUE=" . $monthnum . ">" . $ndx_mese[((integer)$monthnum)] . "</OPTION>"
. "<OPTION VALUE=01>" . $ndx_mese[1] . "</OPTION>"
. "<OPTION VALUE=02>" . $ndx_mese[2] . "</OPTION>"

Code (markup):