…came up to me a few days ago and said, “Daddy, can I play Volcano?”

‘Volcano’ is her name for Planitia. Guess what her favorite thing to do is.

Now, when I moved my blog I accidentally deleted some files. One of those files was the most recent version of Planitia.

Plus, with my switch from DirectX to OpenGL, my Planitia project is currently completely borked.

So I had to tell her no.

She pouted.

Guess what my personal project is this week.

Last night my three-year-old son was walking around naming the colors of everything.

He touches my shirt. “Blue!” he says, and we all say, “That’s right, good boy, etc, etc”.

He touches my daughter’s hair. “Bwown!”

“That’s right, you’re such a smart boy!”

He touches my hair. I’m fully expecting another “Bwown!”

“White!”

My new daughter arrived at 11:53 in the morning on December 6th, 2004. Needless to say, I’ve been a bit busy since then!

She is our third child, so at this point my wife and I have the drill pretty much down – trade shifts sleeping, keep the bottles and nipples clean, always burp her or she’ll get the hiccups and won’t be able to go back to sleep, etc, etc.

I’m happy she came along. Seeing your new child for the first time is a wonderful experience, and it was one I thought I’d never have again (although now I know I’ll never have it again – we’ve…taken steps).

I think everyone should have kids. Note that I said kids, plural. If you have only one child you do not get the full experience. It’s like Bill Cosby said – if you have only one child, and something in the house is broken, you know who broke it.

Of course, that’s not the sum total of the child-raising experience. There’s lots of other great stuff as well, like when my first daughter climbed up onto the couch next to me when she was three and said, “Whatcha doin’ Daddy?” and I said, “Playing Final Fantasy VII” and she said, “Oooh, what’s that?” And we ended up playing through the whole game together, with me reading all the text out loud to her (editing a bit for content in parts) in different voices for the different characters. It was a wonderful parent-child experience, and is only one of many.

Now my first daughter keeps me buffed while I’m slaughtering Harvest Watchers in Westfall. She’s also always up for a game of Magic. My three-year-old son likes to steal my Neo-Geo Pocket Color so he can play Pac-Man.

Being a gamer dad is great. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Sorry I haven’t been posting. I’ve been a bit distracted these last two weeks by the approaching birth of our third child. Today is the day…wish us luck!

My nine-year-old daughter pwned me for the first time the other day. Oh, sure, she’d beaten me before, at all kinds of games, but I have never had her lay the smack down on me like she did Saturday.

The game was Soul Calibur 2 (Cube version, of course). I was picking random characters, as I usually do, and the game gave me Seung Mina, who I am terrible with. The Badgirl was playing Cassandra, one of her favorite characters.

I got in an early hit, but after that it was all her – starting with a Guard Impact, which I didn’t even know she knew how to do. Then it was just wheel kick, spinning attack, sweep, etc, etc, until I was dead. No biggie…except that her last attack knocked
my character up in the air.

And then the daughter executed three perfect short stabbing attacks to juggle poor Seung Mina just enough to have her land over the edge…ring out – after defeat.

She beat me with style and grace and then added insult to injury.

I am so proud.