Checking Pulse

Yep, I'm still alive... Taking a break from technology for a bit, here's some personal news:

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.