I’m about to restart my family video project. When Cora was very small I used to shoot long stretches of her doing very little. Playing these back was rather boring. After Callie was born I kept taking just as much video but my goal changed. Instead of trying to capture specific magic moments (like baby’s first step) I would try to get a representative sample of what was going on for us at the time. A few minutes of crawling, a few minutes of play, a few minutes of messy eating. Then I’d cram the best of this footage onto a DVD. There was a time when I was producing these short compilation DVDs at a rate of one each month.

For some reason I fell out of the habit of using the DV camera. It could be that the DV camera is just so much larger than my digital still-photo camera. I take the still camera everywhere and shoot several pictures per day. The DV camera simply fell out of use.

But I want to restart the project, especially now that Cameron is around. Infants change fast so I want some video to remember these early months.

And I’m serious about it too. I just spent money to upgrade my old video editing / DVD making software.

I don’t think I’m an alcoholic because I’ve never cared for hard liquor, but I’m really efficient with the beers. Once I start drinking I keep drinking. Did someone bring home a six-pack today? I’ll drink the six tonight. Did someone bring home a case of beer? It’s gone in four days tops: sooner if I drink one or two in the afternoon before lighting up on them after the kids go to bed. In fact, one of our casual family guidelines is that beer is not brought into our home. I only consume alcohol at restaurants and other outings.

As one way of blowing off steam I have a regular every-other-Wednesday playdate with my friend Greg. He teaches an eventing class at the community college and we meet at at a local restaurant after his last class. Yeah, when I said restaurant I meant bar.

Because of late December close-to-Christmas-ness Greg and I missed our regular outing tonight. Man I was pissed. I look forward to the beer buzz. In fact, it’s a touchstone of my week; something I look forward to.

So I’m at home and pissed that Tee is out Christmas shopping on my beer night, and my beautiful wife brings home a six pack when she returns. Very nice. She’s too thoughtful/good for me.

That was today: Cameron wouldn’t take a nap, wouldn’t take a bottle, only wanted to be held and entertained. Holding the baby constantly means that I have to leave the Sisters to entertain themselves most of the time. That in turn means that toys end up spread all over the place and my parenting of all of their interpersonal conflicts becomes simply yelling at them from my perch on the couch with Cameron.

Wifey let me slip out to dinner and a movie with a friend of mine tonight: one of the Matthews. We saw Blood Diamonds. Its tale of greed, civil war, child soldiers, refugee families and violence upon violenct would have made for a very powerful documentary, but I ended up disgusted that this sort of thing is served up for entertainment. I spent much of the film silently asking God’s forgiveness for humanity’s many many sins.