We’re going to head to Michigan this week to visit Tracy’s family. Traveling with the kids should be interesting.

Lauren is doing well, she’s growing and starting to smile sometimes. I think she slept for more than 6 hours straight twice this week, so that’s progress.

Lucas is really fun, he’s a real joy to have. He and his a friend at day care Margaret-Ann are the cutest little 2 year old couple you’ve ever seen. His language and learning skills are improving all the time. He can understand most of the simple instructions we give to him. So if you ask him to get his ball or blanket he can do it. This is one step away from him becoming my own personal slave laborer. I am going to pay him $20k/yr good towards his college education. He’s good with his sister, he never gets jealous and he tries to help take care of her sometimes. Our only problem is that we let him watch a bit too much TV. Little Einsteins is his favorite.

Work is getting a bit boring. I’ve been doing a lot of systems and performance metrics and monitoring for the past year or so, but I think it’s turned into a bit of a routine. I wouldn’t mind doing something a bit different, but I have no idea what yet. It doesn’t matter, I am more focused on the kids these days than work.

We went to pick berries at a local U-Pick berry farm. It was a bit early in the season and crowded, we did get some decent blackberries, but at prices no better than store bought. $3 each adult to pick and $3/lb which turned out to be only $2. Store bought is like $12/lb. On the other hand, it was pretty fun and Tracy made a really good blackberry sauce that she put on waffles on Sunday.

The rest of Father’s day wasn’t too eventful. We joined a local pool last week, so we’ve now gone there a few times and it was pretty much empty on Sunday, so that was nice and relaxing. Lucas likes that pool quite a bit. Finally getting around to reading Freakanomics.

Watching Lucas learn is interesting. He’s got a 50 piece alphabet jigsaw puzzle with the alphabet that he’s done a dozen times. The way he picks pieces is vastly different than how I would do it. With any puzzle piece he can identify what object was on it(there is one object for each letter of the alphabet), and he immediately knows what area of the puzzle it goes to, faster than I do. But he takes quite a long time to find the exact place and he has a harder time orienting the piece to fit it in the right spot. For me, I wouldn’t know the object a any piece is part of, but I’d search for pieces which are next to objects that I already have. It makes me wonder how I unlearned the basic instincts that he is using.

After a week of using the Wii Fit, I can say it’s pretty good. I’ve spent probably 4 hours with it and it’s helped me get motivated, which is a primary goal.

Balance sensing is good, it’s very sensitive. I like the Yoga stuff in particular, it shows you basics and as you get more time with it, you unlock more advanced stuff. The Yoga and Strength exercises are the best. I’m not too excited about most of the aerobic exercises. They are fun novelties, but I doubt I’ll be playing them regularly. Lucas though loves the Table Tilt exercise.

Things I want to see: More personalized training. I go running or biking for aerobic exercise. I am using the Fit to motivate myself to work on strength, balance, and flexibility. I’d like to tell the Fit I already run regularly, and that I want to spend 30-40 minutes/day working on core strength and flexibility and then some specific work on my abs. Then let it select a few exercises for me to do and jump right in. I’d like a little less rest between exercises and faster explanations. I feel like after a week, I’ve already heard each piece of advice and each inspirational message it can give. The Wii Fit age seems kinda hokey and so does using Body Mass Index as a health indicator. I don’t tend to rely on those kinds of metrics. For me, I’m mostly interested my weight and how fat I feel over time.

Sorry I haven’t been posting. I’ve been pretty busy the past few weeks both with baby and work. Work has been going OK. We’ve got a new VP, so we’ll be spending time educating him.

I’m kind of in a gadget buying phase right now, which is strange because I am not usually that into them.

I’m planning on buying the highly anticipated 3G iphone next week. Lots of good reasons to have one I think.

I bought a Wii Fit and used it for the first time today. It’s not bad. I’ve been telling myself that I should try yoga to regain some strength, balance, and flexibility, and Wii Fit seems like a pretty good introduction. As with any exercise program, the key is consistent motivation, if I can get 5 hours a week of any kind of exercise then I think I’ll be fine. Making it a game helps keep me motivated. It never actually told me how much I weigh, which might discourage me anyways. I’m not too impressed with the balance type games. The dancing game in particular has a very confusing UI which didn’t relate at all to the little bit of DDR that I’ve played. The strength training sessions aren’t bad. I think of the Fit as $90 which if it can get me to workout just a few times, it’s cheaper than a personal trainer.

I’m also considering buying an Asus eee PC. The things that most appeal to me about it(besides the obvious portability) are the flash drive(which makes it much more durable and increases battery life) and the embedded linux on the motherboard which can boot super-fast(<10 seconds). Plus because it’s linux, it’s less likely to get slowed down by malware. The hackability of it is nice in theory, but I’m probably too lazy to actually do it. The price is a bit steep, but I think it’s worth it. We’ll see though, I usually convince myself over a span of several weeks before I go out and buy.