It's been an amazing year for me. At work, I've cleared out a wide variety of standing issues that will make us much more able to respond to the needs of our partners quickly, and helped get some projects and contracts moving in a way that keeps us doing interesting work. In my graduate program, I've finally gotten into a groove on my thesis and think that I'll end up with an interesting experiment to write about and discuss this coming year. Most obviously, I've become published my first book which, thus far has been very well received by reviewers.

That's only one half of my life though. I've also bounced ideas back and forth with Kate for her masters project, which should be really interesting to watch evolve in the coming months. We're also expecting another addition to our family. While I'm not confident in my ability to manage two little ones at once, I've also finally gotten into the groove of fatherhood a little bit and am looking forward to starting it all over again :) With everything that's happened this year, the two highlights that I'm proudest of are two evenings with Aidan.

Aidan has a habit, when he focuses on learning something, of getting absorbed totally. Back before his first birthday in February, he decided that he was going to walk. That weekend, he just would not sleep—he'd nap for a little while then be up again, stumble/cruise/walking until he got it down. Fast forward to this month, it's happening again, this time with letters. He reads letters to us until he can barely keep his eyes open, drop for a nap, then wake up shortly after to do it all over again. It makes for an exhausting evening, but it also makes me happy to be with him, doing something that he's so interested in doing.

At the end of the day, the book and projects and software are great, and I've had a blast with all of them, but this year has given me some of the happiest moments in my life, staying up late and me trying to help him walk and read letters and him helping me remember why I started to love experimenting and learning in the first place.