Today DaddyCon II was in full swing. We all got up in time to get Elisabeth to her 9AM gymnastics class. Once again, I followed (more like tried to keep up with) Elisabeth as she wandered from apparatus to apparatus. Occasionally, she would pause in front of her sisters to exchange some smiling or giggling. The older two girls brought some books to amuse themselves, so I only had to stop by and check in with them a few times. No behavior modification instructions needed to be issued. We spent much of the rest of the day lazing around. The effect of all the traveling must be catching up with parents and children alike.

I did try to tune in to the BloggerCon webcast but I kept getting an error message about the server being busy. For all I know, the broadcast stream doesn't work with the Mac version of Windows Media Player. I popped into the IRC channels, but I didn't really have time to follow them all, and the content was kind of sparse for someone that wasn't on site.

This afternoon, we took some time to put some of Abigail's turtle graphics exercises up on the girls' blog. These don't quite count as programs -- the drawings are simple and she was just getting the hang of working with the turtle, but I thought it was a milestone worth recording. I also put up a few photos of the young hackers on my Flickr page. Since we did the first session yesterday, Abigail started to use phrases related to the turtle graphics world in her conversations about the real world. The thought pattern is starting to sink in. For today's session she had a few ideas for things that she wanted to try drawing.

Watching Abigail deal with the keyboard and trackpad on the PowerBook reminded me of how much you need to be able to do to interact with a computer, and how surprising various user interface features are. She got confused by accidentally bringing a background application to the front, transparent windows, mouse overs, and Expose, to name a few features. Proper use of the shift key was another cognitive obstacle, although that skill has been assimilated. After watching me touch type on the keyboard, I noticed that she was trying to put her hands over the keyboard in a similar way -- imitating the way that I typed. It's amazing to me how observant she was. Michaela and I did another session of shoe tying, and then we cuddled a bit while Abigail was hacking.

After Elisabeth's nap, we hung out some more (everybody wanted a low key day today) until dinner. Today's dinner menu was frozen chicken tenders and french fries, along with two varieties of pears, accompanied by the usual beverage selections, milk and water. This was also straight forward and uneventful. Since I didn't take into account some of the delays in pre-heating ovens and such, we finished later than I planned, so we mostly cleaned up and then I gave the girls a bath. This is another area where things were different from DaddyCon I. In April, Abigail still needed a parent to help her get through the bath routine. Now we send her off to the master bathroom while I give the younger two a bath in the hallway bathroom. After that was the regular bedtime routine, and the attendees were off to bed.

One of the interesting things about just hanging out with people (children or otherwise) is that eventually you end up talking about random topics. Today Abigail and I had a few conversations just because we were hanging out. The topics were those of adult conversation, and I found myself amazed at how fast children grow up. While that means a finite number of future DaddyCon's, it makes each one all the more precious.