Today was Bike to Work Day, and I biked to work, just like I do most other days.

I missed out on it last year because I was still out on paternity leave at the time. That means I've almost been back at work a year.

Since we only have one car, and when Zoe was little and sleeping a lot, it made most sense for me to start biking to work again. I'm really glad I did, because not only is it faster compared to the round trip time that Sarah would need to take to drop me off and pick me up, it's a lot easier on her and Zoe. It used to be a challenge for Sarah to get from home to work and back in the mornings without Zoe falling asleep in the car.

The only times I've needed a lift have been in wet weather during winter, and when I've been sick. Now that we're out of winter, we should have endless sunshine for months, and it's starting to warm up, which makes biking so much more pleasant.

It takes about 10-12 minutes door to door, which is short and sweet, and most of that is on the lovely Stevens Creek Trail.

I'm glad I've been able to stick at it for the whole year. I see no reason to stop any time soon.

I got in early this time and started working on this post a day early.

Well, we've made it. We've all managed to survive parenting to the 1 year mark. Zoe continues to do fabulously. Today she had her 12 month paediatrician appointment, and weighed in at 19 pounds and 8 ounces (8.8 kg), which has brought her up from the 25th percentile for weight to around the 50th percentile. She's also up from the 25th to the 50th percentile for height. She got four shots today, which she was singularly unimpressed about even before she was jabbed.

Somewhat surprisingly (to us) Zoe still isn't walking. She'll stand on her own if you distract her with something, but otherwise she'll fall down and prefers to crawl everywhere. She'll cruise around with the help of furniture, and she'll happily walk while pushing something. Go figure. I really thought she'd be walking into her 12 month appointment at the paediatrician.

Developmentally, she's waving and pointing now. I'll usually get a wave goodbye out of her when I head out the door to work in the mornings. She seems to be picking up things pretty quickly now. One of her traits has been she'd always toss her sippy cup on the floor when she was done taking a drink from it. She's been doing this for months. In one sitting, I taught her to hold it out to me and say "ta!" instead, which is great, because now at mealtimes, I'm not picking up the sippy cup off the floor a dozen times.

We had another trip back to Australia last month, and this one was purely vacation, so we had a nice couple of weeks of pottering around with family. Zoe again handled the flights very well, although the jet lag upon returning to the US seemed a lot worse than I remembered after our first trip. The pilot was pretty punchy with the seat belt sign on the way to Australia, so we had to keep taking Zoe out of the bassinet while she was asleep. Incredibly we were able to do this about four times before she woke up.

She had a bit of a cold before we left for Australia, and that turned into a nasty cough, which was diagnosed as bronchitis the first week we were there. We got some antibiotics for her, and that cleared the cough up. She also had a couple of spontaneous vomiting incidents, which were out of character for her (but Sarah contracted some kind of tummy bug herself, so it wasn't entirely surprising). Despite these health issues, she was still in excellent spirits the whole time, and I think she thoroughly enjoyed herself.

We went to Surfers Paradise for a couple of nights in the first week, and rented an apartment on the 23rd floor of the Chevron Renaissance, and pottered around the Gold Coast a little bit. We went down to Palm Beach, where we used to holiday every year when I was a kid, and caught up with my cousin who lives there, and Zoe had fun on the beach.

That weekend, we held an early first birthday party for family and friends in a park and had a barbecue lunch.

The following week we spent a few days on the Sunshine Coast, with some of Sarah's extended family, and pottered around on the beaches up there.

Our flight back ended up being delayed 9 hours, but fortunately we found out before we got to the airport, so we had a nice, unexpected extra day in Brisbane. It also meant that we flew back for Zoe's night time sleeping time, which made for a pretty good flight (but made the jet lag worse for her once we got back).

I wonder what the next year will bring us? At a guess, more teeth, talking and walking.