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?

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.

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!

For those of you who don’t follow us on Facebook, I have added two new photo albums. First are pictures from Christmas/New Year’s in Newton.

And second, we have pictures of me pushing Emma around in a sled in the three inches of snow that we got here in Concord last night.  I also have a short video of me pushing Emma around in her sled. Enjoy!

Tonight Emma went trick-or-treating for the first time. (Technically this is her second Halloween, but last year she couldn’t even walk yet, so we didn’t dress her up.)  She had a blast!  You can see her duck costume here.  She didn’t have any problem with wearing it, and even got lots of extra candy from everyone who thought she was so cute.  She walked quite a long ways too, all the way down our street and back!  And she was good about knocking on the door, saying “trick or treat!”, and saying “thank you” after they gave her candy.

Of course, these things don’t come naturally.  We had to practice saying “trick or treat” first!  The video below shows a little bit of that process.  (We were practicing with toys instead of candy.)

It’s time again for some new pictures and videos of Emma.  I added two new albums to the photos page.  First, Emma’s second first-birthday party.  That’s right, Emma got to celebrate her first birthday twice—once with family and then again with friends.  And second, we have a set of photos from our recent trip to Myrtle Beach, which we took in the last week before I started my new job.

Beyond that, I have four new videos for you.  Here is a video from a month and a half ago, showing Emma climbing the stairs.  We happened to catch her descending the stairs properly for the first time while we were recording this video.  Nowadays she can go all the way down the stairs with no problem.

Next, we have a series of scenes in which Stephanie and I try to get Emma to play the drums in Guitar Hero.  We had some success, but I think Stephanie and me end up playing the drums more than Emma does!

Now we get to the afore-mentioned beach trip.  Nothing particularly special about this video, it’s just Emma wandering around on the beach for fifty-nine seconds.  Enjoy!

And to finish this off, we have another demonstration of Emma’s musical inclinations.  We never taught her to dance, but we found that whenever fast music would come on during TV shows or video games, Emma would start dancing.  So I tried to capture it on video, and I was mostly successful.

It’s hard to believe it, but Emma turned a year old on Sunday.  She is now walking like a pro.  There are two new photo albums available: miscellaneous photos of Emma over the last three months, and Emma’s first birthday party.

And if that’s not enough, I’ve got three videos for you.  The first one shows Emma’s progress in learning to walk over the past few months.

Next, we have Emma’s first experience with birthday cake.  She didn’t like it very much!  I’m sure that’ll change over time.

And lastly, we have a video of Emma opening presents.  She got practice at this last Christmas, but now she’s really good at it!

We woke up this morning to find our yard blanketed with an inch or two of snow!  Of course, this meant we needed to take Emma out for her first sledding experience.

I’ve put up a new album of snow photos, which you should certainly check out.  We also took some video of the experience, which I am posting below.  Enjoy!