Skip to main content

20 Months

Little Joe and Rachael enjoying visiting the Roman Forum
We're finally at the end of our little experiment of living in Belgium.  We leave next week and are looking forward to little Joe finally having that chance to meet his cousin Emily for the first time.  It looks like we are also going to have the chance to spend Christmas this year with Rachael's father and his wife Caroline, which will be the baby's first real Christmas with family.

As always, he has changed quite a bit since my last post.  He is regularly eating at the table with us on a regular chair rather than in a high chair and has been very engaged with what he wants when eating his dinner.  He also has been doing a great job starting to learn to tell us what he wants when he is frustrated and has learned how to say 'please' using sign language.

Little Joe also really loves playing games like hide and seek and just recently started hiding from us to try to scare us.  He also plays peekaboo with his hands when we are getting him dressed or changing his diaper, which I think is his coping mechanism for an experience that normally stresses him out.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Week 17 update

Last night Rachael and I decided on a Natural Birth center in Chantilly for baby delivery. She's been immersed in baby books and documentaries since we found out she was pregnant and I know that she's been wanting to find a great natural birth center. I could tell from watching her last night that she can see herself having the baby there and that she's getting very excited about all this - unfortunately we still have 20 long weeks to go. We've decided to schedule an ultrasound for 2 weeks from now to hopefully determine what gender the baby will be. Rachael's been going back and forth for some time now on what it'll be ... some days she feels its going to be a girl, but recently it's gone back more towards boy. Basically... we won't know until the ultrasound. Rachael's belly is definitely starting to show; you can tell that she's actually pregnant now and not putting on a little extra weight for the upcoming winter. She's been starting ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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