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!

I got a fancy new DSLR camera for Christmas, and got a chance to try it out while spending Christmas at Myrtle Beach with Stephanie’s family. I got a ton of pictures, but I have only put up 113 of them.

The camera also records video in HD (720p 30fps or 1080p 20fps). The video below is one I recorded at 720p, though here it’s displayed at only 360p (which I think is equivalent to YouTube’s “HQ” setting). I would have trimmed the video more, but my recent upgrade to Windows 7 left me very surprised to find that Windows Movie Maker has been removed. Supposedly it has been replaced by Windows Live Movie Maker, a completely different program that lacks a lot of features that were in the Vista version of Movie Maker. I guess I need to install Premiere or something. I haven’t needed it in the past for what little video editing I do for this site, and I’ve been doing pretty well at using only legally-acquired software for a while. Oh well.

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.)

Those of you who don’t follow video game news too closely may not be aware of Heavy Rain.  It’s a game I’ve been following for some time, and every new trailer that is released makes me even more excited about it.  Calling it a “game” is even a bit of a stretch, it truly is more like an interactive movie.  Kind of like a really sophisticated “choose your own adventure” book.  Below is a video that was released this week that gives a really good overview of what the game will be like.  (It was aimed at a Japanese audience, hence the Japanese subtitles, but everything except the game dialog is in English.)  The basic idea is that there are four characters that you control through the course of the game, and they all end up investigating a serial killer (the “origami killer”).  I like the idea (which is discussed in the movie below) that you can’t truly mess up.  No matter what happens, you can keep playing and just deal with the consequences.  Even if all four characters end up getting killed, there is an ending to the story for that situation.

Anyway, the game won’t be finished until sometime next year, so I don’t want to give too much praise to a game just because of a clever concept.  That said, I totally dig the concept.

Also, this video is over nine minutes long.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I have a whole new slew of pictures and video for you to partake of.  I doubled the size of our Summer fun 2009 photo album by adding more random pictures from the summer, starting with Emma in her kiddie pool.

I also added a new album of photos from Labor Day weekend at Williamsburg/Jamestown/Yorktown, totaling fifty-three photos in all.

As for video, I’ll warn you that there is quite a lot here.  Seven and a half minutes of video, if you put it all together.  The last one, alone, is over four minutes.  I group them together for those of you who don’t care about these things.  For those of you who enjoy them, well that just means more to enjoy.

First up is a short clip Stephanie recorded one day of Emma wearing her slippers and playing with a hat.

Next, we have a video of Emma playing the “Where’s Emma?” game behind the curtains at our condo in Williamsburg.  She’s been playing some variation of this game for quite some time, but this is the first time we were fortunate enough to catch it on video.

Next is a video of Emma’s various animal sounds.  She knows more than we got to.  Stephanie walked into the room partway through, and of course Emma found running to her much more interesting than reciting animal sounds with daddy.  From there, Stephanie grabs the camera to record Emma bringing me a book to read with her.

And lastly we have a video that may be surprising to some of you who know how non-athletic I am, but I’m actually trying to teach Emma how to play soccer in this one.  She’s actually quite talented for a seventeen-month-old, I’d say!

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!

Just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday here are a few more videos of Emma for everyone to enjoy.  On November 13, exactly two weeks before Thanksgiving, we had started to notice how close Emma was to being able to crawl.  She had learned to get on hands and knees, and she could kind of rock forward and backward.  I predicted that she would be fully mobile by Thanksgiving.  Prediction confirmed.  You can see the progress she made in just eight days in the video below.

And second, we have a rather long video of Emma and yours truly “playing football.”  Which causes her to giggle uncontrollably.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

This is awesome.

That is all.