Photo-A-Day #2365

I have no idea where today went. I spent most of the morning doing followup with many of the contacts I made at the Time to Play showcase. There were so many great people that I met and trying to get caught up on Follow up takes a long time. the thing is I write a personal note to each person that I made contact with and to write a personal note takes a good ten to twenty minutes. So I didn’t get to everyone. I’m getting there.

I recorded an Episode of Geek Dads Weekly today with Daniel M. Clark. We talked all about the Time To Play Showcase and much more. In the show I lamented at the end about teaching Eva to Ride a bike. When we do Geek Dads Weekly we do it Live on Mixlr.com as well as record it for iTunes. Mixlr has a chat room and I got a great link from Shawn Collins (@affiliatetip) from Affiliate Summit. He directed me over to this video from the NYCParks. Called I’ts My Park: Learn To Ride a Bike.

So, after the show I went out to the garage and attempted to dismantle the pedal system of the bike that Tara found for Eva. I got one pedal off and the other was so stripped that I couldn’t get the second one off. I took off a ton of other stuff because I want to make it into a glider bike to help Eva get her balance. So, I left that task for another day.

Eva brought home some homework. We were to create a tree that was fall themed. So we sat down together and attempted to color the picture. It is tough to color an 8 X 11 sheet of paper with three people especially when one used half of her body to cover the picture. She wanted to draw decorations on the tree. Allison colored in the tree itself and I started coloring the ground to look like a leaf covered ground. Then Eva wanted to draw pumpkins on the tree too. Then Allison and Eva created tissue paper leaves and Eva put a bunch of butterfly stickers on the picture.

Here’s my problem, I am so uptight and anal retentive that I was a little annoyed by having the butterflies on the tree because there aren’t many butterflies still alive in the fall. Who cares? Why should I get annoyed with my daughter trying to express herself. Why is that? Why do I do that.

So we continued to do the picture. I made some pumpkins on the ground and the first leaf that Eva glued on was a huge purple one and she glued it right down on the pumpkin. And Parent of the year says to her, “That’s the Best place you could put that?” Why would I do that? Allison called me on it and I took a moment to search myself and take a deep breath and just let it go. Once I did that we had more fun making this tree. I then drew some little images of Me, Allison and Eva. Eva asked me to add in the cats too and then we were finished.

Later in the evening our friend Mike came over for dinner. Eva was so excited for his visit. She was all mopey before he arrived and refused to eat until he arrived (he was late, of course). But when he walked through the door she brightened like the midday Sun. Mike lit up as well. We had a nice visit and while we were sitting in the living room I picked up my Perplexus Epic. I put my magnetic fisheye lens on my phone and shot this image. I love it since the flash makes it look like the Perplexus Epic is glowing. I’ll be reviewing this product soon, it is an amazing 3D maze game that challenges players to navigate a small marble through the maze. It takes dexterity and patience to get through over 125 different challenges. I was only able to get up to 45 before I screw up. An amazing product that I can’t wait to share with you.