Daddy: Joshua, that’s Daddy’s chair, you need to sit in your own chair.

Joshua: No, sit, sit … chair!

Daddy: But if you sit there, where am I going to sit?

After thinking for a minute, Joshua pointed at the chair with his booster-seat strapped to it and said “Sit there”.

Daddy: [Laughing] No, Daddy’s too big to sit there.

At this point, Sam turned to me excitedly and asked: “Do you realize you are actually having a conversation with your son?”.

I’ve thought about it, and of course I’ve had other “conversations” with both Joshua and Jacob before, but Sam asked me to remember this one in case she forgets it someday.

As you wish.

At the time, I didn’t really know what it means to be a father. Although I had excellent examples in my own parents, it was still just a label. It was something that had never applied to me before so I had no way of knowing what it truly meant. I think I’m only beginning to understand that responsibility and that makes me appreciate my parents even more. Sam and I still turn to each other every few nights and say to each other “Can this really be happening?”

It’s been a challenging two years in many, many ways, but we consider ourselves very blessed.

Check out my photos on Flickr for some pictures I uploaded this morning.

My Dad and his long-time girlfriend were married last weekend. Congratulations! It was a small ceremony, but they did hire a D.J. for the wedding reception. Jacob and Joshua surprised Sam and I by dancing the night away. They really shook off their shy natures and partied it up as only 2-year olds can do, charming all the ladies on the dance floor. What a great experience for them, they need more opportunities to interact like that. My brothers and parents were great help in watching after the kids too.

The only downer of the night was as we were leaving, standing at the elevator, Joshua had his hands on the elevator door and I was talking to my Dad. When the elevator door slid open, the fingers on Joshua’s left hand got caught between the door and the wall. Argh, the same fingers he had burned the day before on my Mom’s wood-burning stove. Ouch! He started screaming and I didn’t have any way of closing the door because it was only open a few inches. In retrospect, I should have checked the door with my shoulder to give him a fraction of an inch to pull his hand out, but instead I made sure his fingers weren’t caught too deep and gently pulled them out. He cried for about 10 minutes but he got to play with some ice and got over it relatively quickly. What a helpless feeling though! Ugh, how to prepare for the next catastrophe?

Anyway, it’s always great to visit the extended family and see how well the kids get along with their uncles and grandparents. Both Joshua and Jacob recognize each of their three uncles and one aunt by name now, which is great because they get to see them only once every couple months (and Jay and Heidi are living up north now so that’s even less of an opportunity).

The boys are not quite two years old yet. A week from today they will be – which is a shocker. I can’t believe that this much time has already passed and it’s amazing to see how far the boys have come. We’ve had our challenging moments but to see them growing happy and healthy is truly one of my greatest joys.

Just this week, I’ve stopped trying to keep track of the words that they know. They are well past the 50-word mark and have started on 2-word sentences and questions. What a truly bizarre experience to carry on a conversation with my kids. Guess I’ll have to get used to that pretty damn quick.

On a geek note, I was able to sneak away for a couple hours on Saturday and meet up with Rob and Don at a Starbuck’s in Windsor. I hadn’t seen Don in probably a year so this was great – and to learn that he and Julie are expecting in September was also great news. Anyway, we geeked out a bit about our jobs, the upcoming GDC, and we double-checked that we can use my PDA and my video-camera with Rob’s laptop. It was a good thing we tested it out because I found out that I needed a 4-pin to 4-pin Firewire cable. As it turned out, there was a Best Buy 2 minutes away, so $20 later and we had made sure that we could capture video before we had to disperse back to our families.

So look for upcoming blog posts and the occasional audio and video casts from Rob and I on the Game Developer’s Conference. The bender journey starts in T-minus 10 days.

Anyway, on the way out while packing everybody into the minivan at 8:45 PM (we didn’t realize how late it was), I saw two younger guys getting out of their car and carrying a bundle of stuff towards the store. I didn’t think anything of it until I started pulling out of the parking lot and saw them sitting down beside the store entrance, in other words planning to camp out for the night.

“I wonder what they’re camping out for… is there a Ticketmaster outlet in Toys ‘R’ Us?”

This morning when I got into work and checked my feeds, Mister Scoble enlightened me as to what they were waiting for: The Xbox 360. It was cold last night, I hope it was worth it…

1. Make Everything Available
2. Cut the price in half. Now lower it.
3. Help Me Find It

I started thinking about this again while watching some Our Gang (Little Rascals) VHS tapes I borrowed from the library. I would gladly pay to have restored, remastered and uncut/uncensored versions of these great films on DVD (especially if they had the same level of care present in the
Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs), yet they are simply NOT AVAILABLE. There were some Cabin Fever DVDs that were released years ago that are long out of print. I’m currently on the eBay hunt for Laserdisc versions of these films. Ironically because whoever owns the rights to these films are not releasing them, they are contributing to a thriving piracy/bootleg community (I was very suprised to find snazzy-looking bootleg DVDs of these films on Amazon, of all places!).

My general rule is: Plunk down my hard-earned cash for the stuff that is available and quite simply bootleg the rest… If you lock up national treasures, don’t expect people to take it sitting down. The bottom line is this: I want my kids to experience some of the great things that I did as a kid. I am not going to let the fact that certain films are entangled in ownership or censorship battles or that some marketing executives feel that there isn’t a market for such and such a film stand in the way of enriching my children’s life experience (and yes, I know there is more to a children’s life experience than watching some funny shows – but that was a big part of mine). My kids will soon grow up – and I don’t have the luxury of waiting until you sort out your legal battles or clear things with the politically correct crowd. I need to act now.

I will apply the same rationale to Disney’s Song Of The South (may be released by Disney November 2006) and those great black and white Fleischer Popeye films that are being held for ransom by King Features Syndicate. Release these films and we’ll buy them! In today’s Long Tail world there is profit to be made.

These are a few books they loved when they were very very young (under 6 months):

Babies love to see other babies’ faces for some reason and Margaret Miller’s books are just that: Big pictures of babies with simple keywords attached to each (“Boohoo!”, “Yippee!”, “Yum-Yum”). The Clang! Clang! Bang! Bang! book has a little rattle attached to it that makes noise when the whole book is shaken.

And here are some they loved up until they were about 12-15 months old:

You have to be pretty imaginative with “Polar Bear”, because they use odd animals like a zebra, hippopotamus, and walrus but you can figure something out. It’s not like your baby will call you on it when they go to the zoo for the first time. And as for Dr. Seuss, I expect my boys are no longer too into “Green Eggs & Ham” because half the pages are ripped or missing in our copy

Now that our boys are toddlers, they’ve let some of those books fall out of favour, but we struck some gold at the library relatively recently with the Sesame Street Toddler books. I think they relate because the boys actually watch Sesame Street, the character designs are so appealing and recognizable, the language is simple and it deals with things in their day-to-day life. It looks like they may not be in print anymore (from the looks of my searches on Amazon), but if you can find them at the library or at a garage sale, give them a whirl:

• I Did It!
• Little Bert’s Book of Numbers
• Quiet Time
• Naptime

and my personal favourite:

With this lovely excerpt that I just HAD to capture:

I will only ask this one question: Are Little Grover’s eyes crossed there?

Others in the series that are not on Amazon: Say The Magic Word, Please, Little Ernie’s Book of ABCs, Say Bye-Bye.

I don’t think you can go too wrong with these…

I’m also a big animation fan, so I’m always pleased to see that the Library has both Looney Tunes Golden Collections (Volume 1 and Volume 2) as well as a great selection from the Disney Treasures DVD series. The kicker is one of the DVD sets they have is the controversial “Walt Disney Treasures – On the Front Lines” with cartoons about Nazis, WWII propaganda and Hitler – in the children’s section no less. I did warn the librarians about it, but his response was “Oh, well because it’s Disney it goes into the Children’s Section”. Shrug shoulders, life goes on…kids need to learn about Nazis sometime I guess.

Anyway, their “grown-up” DVD section is also vastly improving since we first moved here two years ago. I find that it only makes sense to check out DVDs at the libraries because I never know whether my wife and I will actually find time to watch the movie/show living on our busy schedule with the kids and I hate paying for something I can’t watch. By the end of the day, more often than not, Sam and I are just ready to crash.

I decided to check out The Office – The Complete First Series last weekend and I watched the first three episodes. Not Sam’s cup of tea, I think it’s the British accents and the fact that it’s really hard to make out what they’re saying when they throw their lines away like that and you can’t crank the TV volume lest you wake the slumbering babies in the next room. I think it’s hilarious, though. Somewhat reminiscent of Office Space via its “cubicle hell”, but with considerable more depth and subtlety. That subtlety in British Comedy often gets attributed as “stuffiness” or “dryness”. But all you have to do is watch a bit of Monty Python to realize that folks in the UK have their wacky side too. And I think Ricky Gervais is a genius: co-director, co-writer and one of the most talented actors I’ve ever seen. Highly recommended!

Oh, and in case none of the links above interest you, this is about all I’ve got left.