One of the things that really seems to marvel me so far as a father is watching my son learn things for the very first time.
Like seeing all of the great stuff that he’s been learning in swim class.
Or a few weeks ago when we were walking around Target and I was trying to teach him how to blow to pass time.
Or tonight when I decided to be brave and handed over the spoon for the first time during dinner, only to watch him take several bites all by himself like a big boy!!!
Or, I suppose maybe … learning to walk might also be a good one for the list! 😉
It just amazes me when I stop and think about it … the idea of this little, tiny human who basically started a little over a year ago at zero, and then each day he’s getting a little older, he’s learning everything that he can pick up about the world around him.
I mean, until recently even something as simple as getting dressed has always been a Daddy orchestrated event and yet in the last couple of weeks he’s been helping me put his shirts on by reaching for the arm holes himself … I don’t know, but it’s just the neatest thing to watch him grow and learn and develop tastes and preferences and things that he likes and doesn’t like, and a sense of humor, and even right and wrong … albeit that one’s presently limited to mostly harmless things like biting his parents and hitting the dog, for what it’s worth!
You kind of take for granted learning for yourself, or I suppose it’s just being experienced from the opposite perspective, but to get to see all of that development as he slowly grows into the person that he’s going to be? I didn’t start out writing this intending it to be a father’s day thing, but I suppose it’s kind of appropriate because so far watching Christopher learn has been one of those little treasures for me that nobody tells you about, but it’s just amazing.
I hope that it’s always as easy to make my son laugh as it is right now, and vice-versa!
Being the aficionado of humor that I am, I find myself particularly intrigued to watch Christopher’s sense of humor developing because right now it very much beckons back to the times of slapstick comedy and silly voices and situations, as opposed to more complex forms that take the form of actual words. He loves The Muppets, and to an extent Sesame Street – I think at this point simply because the characters are big and colorful, and sometimes they flail around crazily like Kermit the Frog.
And hearing somebody else laughing is almost a sure-fire way to make him laugh, almost as if the laughter itself is contagious!
I often feel like I’m channeling a bit of The Three Stooges because it’s such a simpler form of comedy and it’s so much different to explore. I’d sound like a crazy person if I were to talk in random voices and “disappear” around doors in the adult world, yet to an 11 month-old all of those things are hilarious, and I might be biased but my little guy has a wonderful laugh that just makes the whole experience very rewarding.
Maybe it won’t be as much fun in a few years when he learns how to heckle, but even then I suppose that’s just another opportunity to teach him something new… 🙂
One family visit down and another only hours away in the car – this little spud needed a quick nap before the next battalion of holiday visitors arrives to smother him with kisses once more!
I think we actually picked this up over at Disney last year, but never even ended up taking it out of the package. Seemed like a fitting holiday decoration for Christopher’s bedroom, though – just his size! 😉
I really liked this series when I started posting them back in September, but I somehow managed to fall completely off the wagon in October. Let’s try to remedy that situation now… 😉
Swim Class Survival
After watching from the sidelines as Sara did swim class with Christopher for the last however many months, I finally had to fill in because she had surgery and couldn’t go in the water one week, and it actually ended up being a lot of fun. I was a little anxious about the whole thing leading up to it, but there were only a few other kids in the class and his instructor ended up being really great about showing me all of the different things that they had been doing. And he went underwater for a few seconds all by himself!!! Seriously, where was this class when *I* was a kid?!
Christopher’s First Halloween Was Great!
He was a baby dragon, and also Mickey Mouse at one point, and both were equally adorable … although the dragon candy bowl picture just slays me… 😀
I Voted
It didn’t work, but at least I tried. Our voting system needs a lot of work here in America.
Smooth Birthday Celebrations with Baby
With last week being Sara’s birthday, we ended up going out for a nice dinner at the restaurant in the hotel where we got married, and despite me being nervous about how he was going to act in a more formal setting (he’s kind of been a little nightmare for me lately), he was actually quite behaved the entire night. Admittedly it helped that there were a few other couples with babies there, too, so at least we weren’t the only that couple, but all in all I think he did good! He did give me a bit of a run for my money in the bathroom because they didn’t have a changing table and I had to do it in the sink, and I’m still not on the same page as my wife with regards to taking him to a movie in the afternoon, but it was a nice night and good for us to get out of the house because we kind of spend a lot more time there than we used to right now.
Baby’s First Safari
Also last weekend we took Christopher over to the Animal Kingdom for his first visit to that park – had lunch at Rainforest Cafe where he got to sit by the elephants, and then pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon walking around looking at the various animals around the park. He slept on and off a lot and we didn’t really get to do rides or anything, except for Kilimanjaro Safaris, which apparently I haven’t been on for a long time because I didn’t realize that they’d pulled the whole poaching bit out of the story altogether! It was fun and it was nice to finally get over there because Animal Kingdom is a park that I just hate to do if it’s not cooler out, so the weather cooperated at least for that part of the day, and there was much rejoicing.
New iPhones!!!
And lastly, I already posted about this earlier in the week, but Sara and I finally upgraded our phones, taking the huge leap from 4 to 6 on Tuesday, and I don’t know about her but I’m loving mine so far. It feels like a new toy all over again, I’m re-exploring apps old and new like crazy, and it’s nice to have a phone that doesn’t give me crap trying to play music in the car anymore, too! Just need to remember to take our old ones in for trade-in tomorrow so that we can get those promotional credits coming that made the upgrade possible in the first place!
Lots of stuff going on right now leading up into the holidays and life is extraordinarily chaotic, but let’s meet back here in a week’s time and we’ll see if I can’t come up with three new positives to post here again! 🙂
Just a quick, evening dip with my boy – look at that cool dude! 8)
So the good news is, apparently Christopher is fairly easily entertained simply by watching his Dad play The Legend of Zelda…
The bad news is…
…I’ve never actually beaten the second quest before – or even gotten very far in it, for that matter… 😕
Also, I feel like I had some non-Hyrulean things that I was also supposed to get done tonight. Dishes? Clean bottles?! Here’s a lesson in choosing your battles, kid – saving the princess always comes first! 😉
