Mrs. G didn’t spend Mother’s Day laying around the house being pampered by the cats. (If nothing else, she knows better than to think the cats will cease their inter-cat hostilities long enough to pamper any mere humans.) She wanted to do something that didn’t quite work out last week: go fishing! She and Little E went fishing and picking blackberries.
Once you see this, it cannot be unseen. … Read more
Little E checks on Gabby Dog… … Read more
In the spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of extinct giant reptiles who would’ve happily eaten him without a second thought.
Little E and I ventured out to the opening day of Discover the Dinosaurs at the recently-reworked Phoenix Village Expo Center (formerly Phoenix Village Mall) and spent an hour examining the giant lizards of yesteryear. Well, okay, I was examining them. They made a lot of noise, they moved, snapping their jaws and flexing their talons, and a lot of dry ice was pumped in. Little E was hiding from the more animated exhibits, and after just a few minutes he really didn’t care too much for the static ones either.
Basically, it’s an unguided tour with animatronic dinosaurs and models that are more like nicely done statues. There are informational placards about each species, and the animatronic exhibits have a lot of pulsating colorful lights (hence some of my photos being a bit blown out), sound effects, and dry ice “fog”. I suppose, if you’re four years old, it’s probably pretty darn scary. … Read more
I’ve made little secret of the fact that I’ve pretty much bred a duplicate of myself. Little E loves daddy’s video game collection. He’s inherited my GBA and many of its cartridges. But sometimes this isn’t such a great thing: what do I do when he’s not interested in his homeschool lessons because he’s got Super Mario on the brain? … Read more
Video games are a pretty big deal in our house. Even though I’ve liquidated large chunks of my formerly sizeable collection, I still think it’s a bigger deal that I’ve been a writer for various video game publications and web sites, sometimes even on a paid basis, and even when I’ve been a stay-at-home dad, the PDF DVDs have brought in the bacon. My interest in this particular field of entertainment has helped the family out quite a bit. (I’m hoping that my equally-obsessive interest in other things can have a similar effect, but we’ll talk about the June release date for VWORP!1 another time.) Video games have also inspired my son to keep striving to learn how to read, because all of the little on-screen descriptions in Super Mario World aren’t going to read themselves. Video games are a force for good in this family.
But just how important are they? … Read more
I’ve recently been liquidating more of my video game collection on eBay, and the thought never occurred to me “Hey, let’s turn around get moar video game stuffs with the moneys!” But I’ve made an exception here, and with good reason. … Read more
When Little E and I last visited the robot store (a.k.a. Hastings, so nicknamed because dad keeps buying Daleks there), he went kinda nuts because he saw Princess Peach from Super Mario. Never mind that this was something between a stuffed animal and a backpack clip-on buddy, and nothing like the box full of Super Mario figures I’d gotten him for Christmas… he really wanted that Princess Peach. He talked about it at home. A lot. He really wanted to go back to the robot store and buy that Princess… right now. … Read more
One of Little E’s favorite games on his Leapster 2 is Star Wars: Clone Wars Jedi Math. From just listening to it (and, okay, playing it just a little bit), it’s a pretty fun little math game (I would’ve gone over to the Dark Side just to have a Jedi Math cartridge back when I was a kid; instead, I had… Math-A-Magic!). He plays it a lot, even if he’s not exactly memorizing the names of the Jedi Council.
Tonight, he played a pretty good game, rescued some Republic prisoners from the Trade Federation, and just before plunging into a new level of the game, held up his new R2-D2 figure and said “LET’S DO THIS, ARTOO!” That’s my boy. 😆
And if you think that’s impressive, check out the age/grade bracket that the game falls under on the label. God and/or the Force willing, he might just be better at all things numerically-oriented than his daddy was.… Read more
Are you ready to get a load of this? I’m not sure the little guy was – he was still half-asleep on autopilot this morning for present-opening time.
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