I have uploaded eighty-nine new photos from the first three weeks of Grayson’s life, in addition to the twenty-one I already told you about. All 110 photos can be found in the Grayson is born album.

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.

I just put up a new photo album covering our 2010 beach trip. I tried my hand at a panoramic photo again, now that I know what I’m doing a little better. I got much better results than I did with my Hawai’i panoramics five years ago. The main thing I had to learn was to take one picture in auto mode, then put the camera in fully-manual mode (duplicating the settings from auto mode) before taking the pictures you intend to stitch. This keeps the camera from being darker when you’re looking at the sun and lighter when you’re looking away, so that everything can be stitched seamlessly. It seems obvious once you know it, but it didn’t occur to me for a while. On the software side, I used the completely free Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor to stitch the panoramic together, and it worked quite well (thanks for the tip, Jonah). Like magic, really.

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!

As I mentioned a few months ago, we got a new digital camera for Christmas.  I was curious to see how it would perform taking pictures at night, so I waited until a clear night with a full moon and took a few photos.  Below is a comparison with a picture I took during the lunar eclipse in 2008.

Now, this isn’t exactly a fair comparison. The exposure on the first picture was too long, and it’s grainy because it was using a higher ISO setting. Maybe I’ll try to do a fair comparison sometime, but I doubt I’ll get around to it. I’m not even sure if I can fully specify the settings manually on my old camera.

One thing I don’t understand is why the size of the moon in the two photos is so similar, given that one camera was 4 MP, and the other was 15 MP. If the images are taken with the same focal length, and the moon is 89 pixels wide in an image 2304 pixels wide, then in an image 4752 pixels wide the moon should be 184 pixels wide. But it’s only 112 pixels wide. Now, that would be true if they are the same focal length, but according to the metadata the 4 MP image is 18mm, and the 15MP image is at 55mm, which is more zoomed in, so the moon should be even more than 184 pixels wide.

My best guess as to the reason is that the old camera has a much smaller sensor that records the image, so an 18mm focal length is a much higher zoom. I’ve seen the term “35mm equivalence,” and I’m not 100% clear on what that means, but I think that’s the difference here. The focal length isn’t the only factor to be considered. I think this means that the new camera has a much wider field-of-view than the old one, but I could be wrong about that too. One of these days I might get a decent telephoto lens; I’d definitely get a much larger moon that way.

Before I go, here are two other pictures I took with the new camera the previous night, when it was a little cloudy.

The next one was interesting because I used a long exposure and I was zoomed out, and I got a lens flare from the moon, which I thought was cool.

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.)

I recently put up a new photo album covering a brief visit by Stephanie’s sister, when Emma got to open yet another birthday present.  You can also see our newly-painted living room in these pictures—it’s a kinda tan color now, instead of boring white.  There are also some pictures of our trip to the beach, but we didn’t take that many pictures this year.

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!