We've done it! We've all survived our first year together.

Today is our son's first birthday and it's been quite a year. This may sound like a cliche, but it really is amazing how much a little person develops over the course of a year. When we look back at his birth photos we can hardly believe that it's the same kid as we have now. He hasn't been out of our sight much, so we're pretty sure it's still him.

This last month especially has seen a lot of progress. He started crawling at about 10 months, but started taking a few steps on his own at just over 11 months. About two weeks ago he was walking from one piece of furniture to another, and now he walks around to wherever he wants to go.

We can tell that he understands many of the things we're saying to him, as well as the "baby sign" we use, but he's not quite to the point of repeating things back. He claps when we ask him to clap, and he comes to us when we ask him to, he understands "no", etc. Just a matter of time before he catches on to the other things, I guess.

For his "birthday lunch" we took him to Red Robin, which is a Pacific Northwest family burger restaurant that has a great reputation as a fun place. I've been going there since college and it's always a good time. My wife's parents were with us and they seem to be very happy grandparents. They are very into him.

We should have a new bike trailer to put in him in tomorrow, so finally after a year we will all get back into an exercise routine and get to spend more time outdoors. I guess this is really when the fun starts, eh?

This weekend was my first Father's Day!

Our son will turn one year old this month. It's been quite a year. This is our first child so everything is new and there are a lot of challenges that we've learned to handle. Nothing Earth shattering, really, just the "normal" stuff that new parents learn.

Before he came along some people told us, "you will not be able to remember what you used to do with all of the time you had". That's not true. I know *exactly* what I used to get done with the time I used to have.

This is just a quick recap of our memorial day weekend. We made a long weekend trip to visit relatives in Walla Walla, which is significant as it involved travel legs of 4+ hours with an infant.

This weekend I made the nine hour round-trip drive from Bellingham to Port Angeles for a surprise birthday party for my uncle. It was good to see family again since I haven't been able to make this trip since our son was born. Of course they all wanted to see him, but that's just too long of a trip for an 11 month old kid to make. Heck, it's almost too long for me to make!

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A couple of days ago I wrote about some of the challenges of balancing home life and working at home when the responsibilities of home life can jump in at any time. I mentioned how our dog Timber had been not eating and throwing up on the carpet, which was not all that unusual for him as this might happen once or twice a year.

This time was different. He was not going back to eating normally as he usually did and was getting skinnier all the time. When we took him to the vet, she mentioned that she might have felt something in his abdomen so we had x-rays done.

When you work at a home office you have to learn a certain amount of discipline so that you can get any kind of work accomplished during the day. That is especially true if you are the primary caregiver to a small child. I imagine that's true if you are primary caregiver of any sort, but I haven't got there yet.

More on The Daily Adventure: Work and Family

Normally installing a baby gate would not be a big deal. Certainly not something that should take all weekend. Those who know me understand that this is not something out of the ordinary.

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Yesterday we had a chance to walk with some friends through a local park.

Like us they are new parents "a little later in life" – that being early 30's. We all have careers in progress, under us or behind us. As we walked and talked it got me to thinking about what each of us can do to give as much advantage as possible to these new people in our lives.

More on Planning for a Child's Future

My wife and I are in the process of teaching our son (who is almost 10 months old now) "baby sign". This is a modified version of American Sign Language (ASL) and the concept is that a baby actually has things to communicate at a very young age.

More on Learning Communication from a Baby