If you can’t play it from this page, click through to the original on YouTube.

When we run out of the backdoor and down the stairs from the deck, she always heads first to the swings. “Put me on the swing, Daddy.”

“Pull me high, Daddy.”

“Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

Sadie gets some good height.

After hours of swinging, Sadie likes to cap it off with a quick run or two down the slide. She doesn’t go down headfirst like her cousin Peter, but she gets some pretty good velocity.

I have a feeling we’ll be spending a lot of time out in the backyard this summer (and likely for the next ten summers or so).

She finds it very zen.

Press one for “Boob”
Press two for “Send the baby back to the hospital”
Press three for “No, seriously. Boob!”
Press four for “Alleviate generalized sibling angst”

For all other requests, please hold on the line and continue wailing.

Your crying is very important to us….

Maybe she’ll be the next Adam Vinatieri. I think she’d rather be the next Junior Seau, though.

Turns out that, like Sheena, Lucy is a punk rocker.

Lucy Holcomb Butler
Born 4/2/2008
8 lbs, 11oz

Everyone is happy and healthy. And excited!

So far, we’ve only had a couple of spills. I’m glad we have lots of rags in the kitchen.

Be it ever so illogical — drop the price of your home, already
We’re not looking to sell our house for a couple of years, at least. I hope that when we do, we’ll be able to accept reality, and price our house to the market.

Do open houses sell houses?
Shill! I really like our Real Estate blog. This entry is on open houses. It’s fun to watch people fighting in the comments.

Should it be free?
Outstanding article on whether software should be free or not. Even if you’re not in the industry, you should read this.

Jason Butler - Twitter
Because it’s important that I have an outlet for 140-character updates on my life through the day. Follow at your own risk.

Sadie is incredibly active, running around the house until she’s nothing more than a blur.

She loves sitting in the living room, where the sun comes in and make her hair all glowy. She likes that.

She loves coloring at her table. She’s graduated from sheets of paper to coloring books. Art school, here we come!

We spent some time yesterday coloring Easter eggs. We have to start with a nice snack first, though. Everyone likes the milk.

We started out with the hard-boiled eggs. You need to drop some vinegar into the cups. Be careful!

While you’re waiting for the eggs to color, it’s fun to play with the basket.

Easter morning: It’s time to search for the eggs. Found one!

So much fun. Sadie ended up with a full basket of eggs. She didn’t like the jellybeans, though.

Baby should be coming in the next ten days or so, so I suspect there’ll be lots more pictures coming soon.

12 practical steps for learning to go with the flow
February was a trying month. March has not started much better. I need to learn to go with the flow a little bit more.

Beat the long tail with 1,000 true fans
Incredibly interesting article about how to survive as a creator without having to rely on the blockbuster. Must read.

Why it’s good to include the tourist hordes in your travel photos
Philip Greenspun shows why including your fellow travelers in your shots can sometimes make them far more interesting.

This week’s TWIT was their best
This week’s episode of “This Week in Tech” was their best. Jason Calacanis and Molly Wood add a ton to the panel, and I hope they become regulars.

Today we did our “stock up on everything you can think of” run to BJs. Now, both freezers are full, and we should be able to live for a couple of weeks without leaving the house when the baby arrives. I’m wracking my brain for other baby-prep tasks I need to do.

Anyway, on to the links…

AngryJournalist.com
Anonymous journalists tell us what they’re angry about today. Quite a bit of inside baseball, but not too different from what I see from time to time in the newsroom.

This is also a good example of what happens to the signal:noise ratio when the social-news hordes descend on a site.

Yet another reason to boycott Best Buy
I have never had a good experience at Best Buy (or their not-at-all-missed competitor Comp USA). They take advantage of the non-technical customers and outright lie when they are caught. I hope that a more activist Congress will reign in some of the corporate excesses.

50 tricks to get you more productive
It’s always good to remind yourself of little ways to keep moving the chains. I’m pretty good about most of these, but I really need to work on a couple of them — especially working on the important things, instead of just the pressing things.

Learn to demo
Good advice from Antonio Rodriguez on how to prep yourself for demoing your product.

She said, “Vote Duck.”

Perhaps we’ve read this book a few too many times:

It probably won’t mean much if you’re not a web geek, but it’s pretty funny if you are.

We haven’t been able to come up with a name for the impending baby yet; I’m going to nominate Calcium Chloride Butler.

This is pretty neat: the Globe’s Wesley Morris and Ty Burr sit and talk about the movies they review in the paper. It’s Ebert and Roeper with a Boston mindset. Plus, they get to go off on the movies they don’t like, as in the case of “The Bucket List.”

Edit: killed the embed for technical reasons…

Also, in case you ever wondered what the Globe’s auditorium looked like, you can see it here. Now, imagine yourself in a two-hour business-review meeting there…

Sadie is looking pretty small outside in the yard.

Sadie is getting really good at feeding herself and taking control of her milk intake. She knows that if she asks nicely, she’ll always get some more milk.

The week before Christmas, we got together and decorated a gingerbread house. Sadie liked putting on all the candy.

Sadie had a very nice Christmas. One of the highlights was her very own tricycle. She doesn’t quite reach the pedals yet, but we’re all looking forward to summer, when she can ride free.

One of her other favorite toys from Christmas is the ever-popular Play-Doh. Spending an hour with the Play-Doh is one of our new Saturday-morning traditions.

That’s all for now. More pictures in a few days!

She’s not quite getting the concept yet.

Archon/Goldman, the former owners of 316 and 322 Summer St., had initially envisioned converting the two properties into luxury condominiums, launching [Fort Point’s] transformation into a community where people live, work, and play - a local version of the Soho and South Beach neighborhoods in New York and Florida[.]

I’ve been coming into my Fort Point offices for the past two and a half years, and I can guarantee you this: Fort Point Channel is NOTHING like South Beach. Trust me.

Ten steps to close down an open society
A scary checklist — one we’ve almost completed.

Does your customer service just want people to go away?
Seth Godin has a smart idea here: measure your customer service people by the amount the customers buys after the call as opposed to before it.

Talent Wars in Boston
Xconomy does a nice write up of the current state of the technology labor market in Boston. It’s a good time to be a techie on the Red Line.

How to be a consultant
Long, insightful article. I faced many of these same issues back when I was consulting.

Top 10 reasons we deleted your comment
The Times’ City Room blog describes how they handle blog comments. Seems quite reasonable, though some in the comments disagree.

Having an iPhone doesn’t qualify you to fly the plane
“Some guy with an IPhone says the weather is good, and wants to know what the real reason is for the delay. Is something wrong with the plane?”

Accident victims face grab for legal winnings
If you are hurt in an accident, you might not be able to get any relief by suing the responsible party. If you win, the insurance company may swoop in and claim the judgment you receive. I can see both sides of this argument, but it still sounds all sorts of wrong.

Misgivings rise with Antarctican tourism
I regret not having been able to see Antarctica while still single and able to travel. In light of the rise in tourism and last week’s sinking of a cruise liner, I worry that it won’t be feasible when we’re ready to travel again.

Rise in holiday call strains mall cops
Nothing heats up the old police blotter quite like the holidays. It must be great fun to break up fights at the mall.

Renting ideas to Fortune 500 companies
Really interesting post from Tim Ferriss about how you can license your ideas to large companies and collect royalties. Beats working, but you have to actually go out and think of useful stuff.

Travel Basics: Moscow
I was trawling our sister site at the International Herald Tribune when I came across their travel blogs, written by the correspondents stationed in each city. The Travel Basics are great primers, not that I’m going to Moscow, or back to Bangkok any time soon.

Fresh pain for the uninsured
Important article from Business Week. Hospitals are outsourcing their collections from the uninsured.

3BR with a mall view
This article about the new condos at the Natick Mall annoyed me in many different ways. This is my favorite quote: “Their $1.6 million, 2,200-square-foot penthouse overlooking JCPenney, the DuGallys said, suits the lifestyle they want for themselves and their Chihuahua, Jasmine.” I always wanted a view of the JCPenney.

The Predatory Lending Association
Outstanding parody site. Ha ha, only serious.

An interview with the author of Programming Collective Intelligence
A highly-readable discussion of a highly-useful book.

Walking scores
This is a neat site that calculates the walkability of any location. My long-time Cambridge apartment gets a 100 out of 100 score; everything you need is within walking distance. My current address only gets a 5. Damn suburbs.

The nerd handbook
s/nerd/geek/g, but otherwise pretty close in a lot of ways.

Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley’s image
Marc Andreessen on how the talent can overthrow the studio system.

And we don’t even hate the Bills. How many points will we score on Shula’s “Asterisk” Dolphins? On the “You cheated, so you didn’t really beat us all those times” Steelers? On the Jets? Can the scoreboards roll triple digits?

She loves having her own whiteboard. Now, when she wants to know more about a subject, we go to the board for a deep dive. Here, we’re dissecting and analyzing her Sunday breakfast: biscuits go in the oven, eggs in the frying pan and bacon in the microwave.

She really feels like she groks it now.

We’re so proud.

Egads. I’m not sure I want her anywhere near my computers; she’ll probably optimize them when I’m not looking and I won’t be able to find anything again.

She’s a real little girl now, with very little of toddlerhood still around. She’s talking all the time. She takes care of her things. She understands when we’re talking to her. She even has her own whiteboard now.

She’s starting to learn some useful life lessons. Here, she’s playing with one of her balloons. Soon, she would see what happens when she decides to roll her whole body onto the balloon. Sorry, but we obey the laws of physics in this household, missy.

Even if the balloons don’t always bring joy, Sadie still gets the high of wearing a crown. She would like every day to be crown day from now on.

What’s a celebraton without cake? On Sunday morning, she helped prepare the birthday cupcakes. She knows that one starts with the muffin cups.

You can’t make a cupcake without breaking eggs, so Sadie helped Mommy incorporate the eggs into the batter.

When it’s all done, you get to blow out the candles. And this year, no unfortunate cupcake incidents!

Happy birthday!

Here are the pictures:

1. Budweiser sign
2. Couple at Fenway
3. Baby at Fenway
4. Fenway math
5. Curt Schilling
6. Jason Varitek
7. Jason Varitek warming up
8. Jason Varitek being all pensive
9. Johnny Damon throwing
10. Johnny Damon warming up
11. Manny Ramirez warming up
12. David Ortiz
13. Curt Schilling faces Derek Jeter
14. Curt Schilling brushes back Derek Jeter
15. Watering the infield at Fenway
16. Yankees fan gets booted from Fenway
17. Another Yankees fan gets booted from Fenway
18. Schilling leaves
19. Keith Foulke saves the day

We had a scheduled ultrasound yesterday, during which we were hoping to be able to find out whether the baby would be a boy or a girl. Unfortunately, the little baby wouldn’t cooperate, demurely crossing its legs. We’re going to have to wait until the big day itself to find out.

If it’s a boy, I hope he likes pink, because that’s what we got.

I like the new Things to Do widget on the Boston.com homepage. So far, it’s done a really good job surfacing interesting events happening around town. Of course, I can’t go to any of them, but it’s fun to see how the rest of the world lives

Curt Schilling announces he’s coming back
Hooray for Curt using his blog to break news. Hooray for the Red Sox getting him for one more year.

How to coast your way to a writing career
Paul Boutin with some good advice.

Ten signs of incompetent managers
I don’t think too many of these apply to me, but, of course, I would be the last to know.

Holliston Beavers
It seems that no one wants to save the Holliston beavers. On behalf of my water supply, I don’t really care what happens to them.

If only I could have gotten back to sleep.

Grr.

On the plus side, I got to catch up on my email, watch an episode of Firefly and walk on the treadmill. All before 5:00am. So productive!

p.s., The iPhone takes some spooky pictures. Other than cropping it, I didn’t touch this one up at all.

Also, if you haven’t had a chance, you should check out my newly re-prettified travelogues and galleries: Tanzania, New Zealand, A Night in the Monster Seats and a day at the Franklin Park Zoo.

I have a couple of other pieces in the works. I hope to have them out by the end of the year.

Pretty good likeness, if I do say so myself.

She went out with the pumpkin, soon filled with a dozen or so candy bars she’ll never see.

We let her have a little bit of a lollipop. She was pretty excited by that, but was all done after only a couple of licks.

I felt bad a little later, though. We let her answer the door when one of the neighborhood trick-or-treaters rang. The ten-year-old boy was dressed up in a skeleton mask, and poor little Sadie screamed. She was so scared — and the boy was petrified. It took me fifteen minutes to calm her down at bedtime.

I hope Thanksgiving isn’t quite that exciting.

This was a fun team to watch, and, with Ellsbury, Pedroia, Beckett, Matsuzaka, Lester and Buchholz, next year is looking pretty good too.

It’s fun to live in the city of champions.

P.S., damn you, Fox. Let’s try starting the games a little earlier next year.

Technorati Tags: Red Sox

The Comcast fiasco
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Passive voice is redeemed for web headings
Interesting! This is what happens when search-engine optimization comes up head to head with principles of good writing.

Programming lessons from Sales — sharpen the saw
I’m always trying to find new ways of looking at old problems. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but it’s almost always worth the time investment.

I was a pre-teen Glicknick
Tales of Larry Glick with lots of links. (Via Universal Hub)

America’s most important issue for 2008 (with a little bit of salty language)

The lottery industry
BS is also prevalent in the business world, as you can see from this entirely content-free quote:

W. Bruce Turner, the chief executive of Gtech, puts it another way. “Gtech has played a key role in fostering the success enjoyed by lotteries today,” he says. “We have grown to be the world’s leading solutions provider to the lottery industry because we focus on creating the greatest value for our customers, which results in higher returns to the good causes they support.”

Everyone else in the house applauds this update to our schedule. The sun is shining and the birds are singing. Hallelujah.

We don’t benefit in this particular way from the World Series, but we certainly aren’t going to turn away all the additional people reading the Globe and hitting the site for the next couple of weeks.

Oh yeah, it’ll work out pretty well for those who bought furniture from Jordan’s, too.

And, who knows, maybe within a couple of years I’ll be find myself a nice comfortable rut — my first since late 2002. Since then, I’ve had at least one major life thing in flux at all times. It keeps you on your toes.

ZipSkinny for Holliston
Neat little application giving you a visualization of all the census data for a given zip code. It’s good info; we’ve dropped all the Massachusetts ones into the crawl.

Oh Joy! Breakfast with the boss
How do you manage work/life balance when other people try to schedule you for breakfast or dinner meetings? I’m going to steal the “buy you lunch to pick your brain” responses.

Asking “why” can be dangerous if your father is a professor
Sadie has started asking “Why?” all the time. I’ve started answering her. She may come to regret asking.

Opening night of the Bruce Springsteen tour
Jimmy Guterman gives his thoughts on the opening night of the Bruce Springsteen tour. I went to my one and only Springsteen show in 2002. Geez, over five years ago — hooray for the blog archives!

Tips for making your tech resume less awful
Not relevant for me at the moment, but always good to keep the resume up to date — and not awful.

Balloon
Bearded pig
Cheetah
Flamingoes
Giraffe
Hippo
Kangaroos
Lion
Meerkat
Peafowl
Red panda
Rhino
Tiger
Tortoise

I probably should have put her in boots, though. I’m not sure the Mary Janes are in real good shape right now.