It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. What can I say, I’ve been busy. If you’re interested, I’ve put up several new photo albums: Easter, May-July 2011, Beach Trip 2011, Grayson’s first birthday party, and some old photos that I never took off my old digital camera from Thanksgiving 2009.

And I’ve also got lots of videos to share. First up is my role as Cat In The Hat at Emma’s third birthday party:

Here’s a random video of the kids playing in the backyard:

Here’s a video of Grayson eating cake at his first birthday party:

Here’s Grayson opening a present at his party:

And last but not least, here’s Grayson playing in the pool during his pool party:

I apologize for the videos from Grayson’s birthday being so dim. For whatever reason, when recording video, my camera uses the exposure compensation setting from the last time you were in manual settings mode. And usually when I’m in manual settings mode it’s because I want to try a long exposure, which always turn out too bright, so I turn the exposure compensation all the way down to -2.

Hard to believe it, but tomorrow marks three years since Emma was born. She had a Cat in the Hat themed birthday party. A few pictures have been posted!

Also, she got a functional digital camera. Except, whenever I see the camera, it makes me a little uneasy. I think it is going to hop at me sideways. I have the urge to fire a missile at it. What is he talking about, you ask yourself? The camera bears an uncanny resemblance to a Dessgeega!

See what I’m talking about?

I finished Donkey Kong Country Returns a few weeks ago and I thought I’d share a few thoughts. Overall, it’s really really good. The most notable thing about it is the difficulty. When a patent filed by Shigeru Miyamoto was discovered a few years ago, describing a system where the game would help players get past tough parts, it was pretty harshly mocked by the gaming community. Since then, the feature has come to be known as “Superguide” and it has been included in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and now Donkey Kong Country Returns1. The last two in particular have shown that the feature doesn’t result in super-easy games aimed at the lowest common denominator. The effect has actually been pretty much the opposite—Nintendo has been able to make really challenging games that they can still market to a broader audience. So getting back to DKCR: the game is really challenging. But it’s not challenging in the same way that NES games were, throwing things at you just for the point of killing you. In those games, when you fail you usually feel like the game was designed in a way that was bad or just unfair. In DKCR (or SMG2 for that matter) when you fail it is usually your own fault. I’m not sure I articulated that well enough. I guess what I’m trying to say is the game didn’t feel cheap. EXCEPT...

The bosses were universally awful. Just the worst. I find it hard to believe that these are the same guys who did boss design in the Metroid Prime games.

The Rocket Barrel stages were also awful. The whole control mechanism felt like it was introduced late in the dev cycle and just didn’t get enough testing and tweaking. The worst example was level 4-5: Crowded Cavern. I died something like sixty times in that level.

Another thing that was nice about this game was that I could play it when Emma was in the room. (Most of the other games I have played lately focus on creative murder, which is inappropriate for 2-year-olds.) One of Emma’s favorite things to do was see the “monkey house” in the very first level. And this is something too cute not to share.

It’s been a few months since I posted some video of the kids, but that’s all about to change! Here’s a video of Emma making Grayson laugh. It reminds me a lot of the video of Emma laughing while playing football, although Emma was three months older in that video that Grayson is in this one. In any case, I think you’d be hard-pressed not to smile during either. You’ll also notice that Emma feels the need to say “jump jump jump jump” while she is jumping. In case you weren’t aware that is what she was doing. :)

Hey for those of you interested, there’s a new set of photos covering July through (early) October, 2010. They are on Facebook too, but they are in higher resolution here.

That is all.

Here are two short videos from our Labor Day weekend in New Bern.  First, we have Stephanie and her mom playing with some 18th-century toys. This is the kind of thing kids did to pass their free time before video games.

And second we have a video of Emma “sweeping the yard.” I guess they didn’t have rakes back then? Also, I introduce Emma to a philosophical discussion, continuing the work of Mark Twain, as to how to discern between work and play.

I’ve been asked to post more pictures and video of Grayson, as it has been over a month since I last shared anything. The problem is that he’s still at the age where he doesn’t particularly do anything... besides eat, sleep, poop, and cry. But we tried. I’ve also posted eleven new photos of Grayson and Emma from the past month. And I also have two videos. The first is a rather lengthy video of Emma playing with Grayson, and the second is actually a video of me coming home from work to be greeted by Emma two days before Grayson was born.

Yesterday morning Grayson Matthew Robinson—the handsome little boy shown below—came into our lives:

The last time I managed to write about Emma’s birth within a few hours, but this time around I guess I’m a little late. Mark my words, someday when Grayson gets rebellious and I ask him, “Son, why did you drop out of school and get all those tattoos and start a Metallica cover band? I mean come on, no one liked Metallica songs even when Metallica performed them, and even before Lars Ulrich had that gender-reassignment surgery. The only people who ever liked Metallica are in their eighties now. It’s just a poor decision.” And he’ll reply “I did it because I wanted to be first. I always got second best, Dad! Look at the day I was born, you couldn’t even be bothered to write a blog post about it! Emma got a blog post. Emma got to pierce her nose. Emma got to go to Harvard.” Then I’ll tell him, “Son, the only reason you didn’t get a blog post that day was because I was so busy falling in love with you.” Then he’ll say “eww gay.” That’s just how teenagers talk.1

All kidding aside, I actually was somewhat concerned that I would never be able to love him as much as I love Emma. But I quickly learned that your love for your children isn’t meted out in discrete quantities from a finite supply. I already feel like I have just as much love for Grayson as I do for Emma. It is very surreal. It seems to be multiplied somehow when I see how much Emma loves her brother too. The video below shows just that, with Emma holding Grayson for the first time.

It has surprised me just how much I can already tell that Grayson has a different personality than Emma. For one thing, he loves being held much more than Emma did. Even as a baby, being held didn’t do much to console Emma. She’s never been much of a snuggler (except when she’s sick). Grayson, on the other hand, is very content to be held. He’s also generally quieter than Emma was at this point, though it remains to be seen if that trend will continue. Emma I’m sure was a little extra fussy because (as you may recall) she was born with a black eye.

In any case, I hope you’ll join me in welcoming Grayson into the world. You can find pictures from his first two hours of life on this very website. I’m sure more will be coming later, but probably not until after we are back home from the hospital.

It’s hard to believe it, but it has already been two years since Emma was born. I just posted a bunch of photos from her second birthday party, which we held on Saturday. Enjoy!

Many of you already know this from Facebook but I thought that I would make a post about it anyway because it is pretty big news in our family: we will be having a boy!

We went to the doctor on Thursday with Emma, Grammy, and Mimi in tow, to find out what the next little Robinson would be.  Grammy and Mimi were both fully expecting a girl, and Emma, when asked what the baby was, she responded “Gurl!”

After all the checking and measuring of the important baby stats, the technician had Kip call in the rest of the family to have the gender of the baby finally announced.  Once everyone was in the room, the Tech announced, “Well, it’s a boy.”  Her inflection showed no excitement or interest.  It sounded like she was telling us that “Well, it’s going to rain today.”  The reactions that followed though were more interesting.  Kip, according to my mother, beamed with a big goofy grin.  Mimi was so excited she teared up and exclaimed, “I know what to do with a boy!”  Grammy was all smiles, and asked me if I was ok.  (You have to understand that Kip and I really wanted another little girl, much like my sister Emily really wanted a little boy.)  I was in a state of shock and surprise for a few seconds, and then I just thought, “God is giving us a little boy, and he is healthy, moving, and going to be very precious when he gets here in less than 20 weeks.”  I was a little disappointed at first, and terrified because I figured out what to do with a baby girl with Emma, but I have no experience with little boys on an extended basis.  There are little boys in the nursery at church, but I usually let them be on their own and when they need a diaper change, I let the other worker handle that.  I am happy that we are going to have a little boy, and I am looking forward to buying him his own new wardrobe now that I know I need to have clothes for a little boy.

For those of you that have been living under a rock or don’t keep up with our lives like a stalker or super-fan, the plan as of now is to have the baby on July 19, via c-section, and name him Grayson Matthew Robinson.  No, the name isn’t a family name, it is just a name that Kip and I picked out when I was pregnant with Emma (in the event that she turned out to be a boy) and we still like it, so it will be the name of this baby.  And if you’re wondering, we are not naming him “Kip Robinson, III” because Kip says having the same name as your dad makes things too confusing. He figures maybe someday he might have a grandson named Kip. And I’m OK with that.