Skip to main content

18 Months

Little Joe enjoying Trafalger Square
in London
Little Joe is now a year and a half old, which seems like an insane concept to me for a lot of reasons.  First, the math in my head says that he has been alive for nearly 5% of my life span; I feel like my life is just flying by and I have already started living vicariously through my son.  Second, it means that he is approaching the age when I have my first memories- I very distinctly remember my 3rd and 4th birthdays- and the thought that the smallest things we do could end up with him as a fond and distant memory for the rest of his life is incredibly humbling and emotional for me.

In the last month little Joe has learned to love going outside, especially on the backpack carrier that we bought for me to use with him.  He frequently begs us to take him downstairs to the main level of the house and then will try to open the front door or will point at the backpack for us to take him outside.  Unfortunately most of the time we are unable to take the time to go outside with our work and school schedules at the moment but it's great to know that is something he enjoys doing.

He has also learned to climb on our dining room chairs on his own, which of course makes us both proud and extremely nervous that he might hurt himself doing so without us around.  We're keeping a closer eye on him and hopefully he learns to get down safely before he falls off and hurts his head.  He also really loves for us to chase him around the house and will frequently walk up to us and say 'rawwrrr' and start to run away while looking over his should in the hopes that we will be chasing him.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

3 Years Old

Joe feeling Nora kick for the first time Today is Joe's 3rd birthday.  It seems like a lifetime ago that he was born and we met him for the first time, and in some ways I feel like it was the start of a whole new life for me.  I can't imagine a world where I come home and don't have a familiar 'Dada!' and a big hug waiting to greet me. Things with Joe have been wonderful lately, despite frequent temper tantrums in the evening that I think we can attribute to his changing sleep schedule.  He frequently plays on his own and often has entire conversations with his toys or other objects in the house that just crack us up.  Last night, for example, he was asking his asparagus, "What's wrong?" and petting it before eventually just popping it in his mouth and continuing on with dinner. Joe's vocabulary has expanded significantly in the last few months, and I feel like we're at the point where he pretty much understands everything we're say...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Shannons

Out at lunch with my wonderful family As always, I feel I need to add a disclaimer here about how busy I've been and apologize to myself - and whoever ends up reading this - about not keeping up with this blog.  It was easier with just Joe because my time home meant mostly quiet during his frequent naps and plenty of time to gather thoughts to put down, where now I feel I can barely keep up with sleep and other basic functions of life. Hectic life aside, I couldn't be happier with where I am right now as father.  Joe is at a wonderful age where he always wants to help us and be affectionate with Nora and we have started playing sports together rather than just hanging around the house.  He's really started taking an interest in baseball and soccer, and whenever I have the chance I try to at least kick the ball around the house a bit if I can't take him outside.  I'm hoping that once things settle down we can really spend some time together and work on some soc...
Post a Comment
Read more

German Kindergarten

Mom and the kids at the Alhambra, Granada, Spain Both kids have started German Kindergarten (Kindi) in the past few weeks.  We're still going through a compulsory transition period with Nora but Joe's been in full-time for a good while and he's loving it.  It's rare that he doesn't come home covered head-to-toe in sand and he still has a hard time leaving every day because he's having such a good time.  His German is improving quite rapidly and he's already saying things I don't understand, which couldn't make me happier.  I'm so happy for both of my kids that they get this privilege of growing up in another country and having two primary languages, which I hope will give them opportunities later in life that I can't even think of.  Even without new opportunities, though, I'm happy that they can grow up in another culture and have the perspective of the world you can only gain through travel that I sorely wish I'd had as a young k...
Post a Comment
Read more