Dad Chats on YouTube

Now that I'm Time Magazine's Person of the Year (so are you, if you didn't already know), I decided I'd better take the next step in my online destiny and post to YouTube. My older kids have been bugging me for years to record or transcribe the lullaby songs I created for each of them when they were infants. So, in this first YouTube video I sing the two songs I created for Amanda when she was a newborn.

I'm using a $20 webcam and the lighting is terrible. I look like something out of a 1950's horror movie. The picture doesn't always keep up with the sound. If there is enough interest, perhaps I'll re-record this with better equipment and proper lighting. Too bad we can't do something about the narrator.

The title of the video is a threat or a promise, depending on your point of view. I hope to do more of these, and to maybe take the time to talk about what being a father means to me. I know to get anybody's attention, they will have to be short, to the point, and meaningful. But that's not easy. As the mathematician Pascal (who loved to write letters to friends and family) once wrote in a letter to a friend, I would have written a shorter letter but I didn't have time.

Alex's First Official Christmas Portrait

My grandson Alexander Benjamin Carr took time out from his busy schedule recently to pose for his first annual official Christmas portrait.

Both Mom and Dad have red hair, so I guess it should be no surprise that Alex's little fauxhawk is red. But I think we should speak to his dresser and photographer--red shirt, red hair, red eye image and a light red background are a little much.

Alex doesn't speak yet, but he already knows to play to the audience with a nice friendly wave.