Day: July 20, 2004

I had a great day, but I think it was a little hard on poor Patches. 

I hauled everyone out of bed at 7:30am so I could drop them off at a neighbors to be watched while I went places with Howard.  (Temple and  Doctor’s appointment – all is normal, no tumorous re-growth.  Yay!)  I picked up an excited-to-see-mama Patches and the can’t-we-stay-longer? rest of the kids and took them home just in time to put Patches down for his nap.

Howard had taken the day off from Novell for the morning stuff and he wanted me to have a chance to go see I Robot before all my friends told me too much.  So he rounded up babysitting for an afternoon matinee.  Poor Patches woke up from his nap just in time for Mama to abandon him again.

Between my arrival back home and Patches’ bedtime there were about 2 hours.  I spent a good portion of them playing word games with him.  I’d been away from him pretty much all day and by that time I wanted to hold my baby. Yeah, I know.  I’m addicted to my child.  Truth is, he was fine all day.  I’m the one who felt guilty.

Just this past week he’s started asking to know the names of things.  So he points and I tell him words and we both grin and giggle a lot.  He just wants to see everything, touch everything, know everything.  He wants input, lots and lots of it so that he can figure out this great, big, complicated world that he lives in.  I love the way his face lights up when two bits of knowlege click together in his head and he suddenly understands something.  I like seeing that happen for the other kids as well, but Patches does this little Happy Dance when he’s pleased with himself that makes me laugh every time.  And then he does it again just to make mommy laugh.

Laughter is healthy, so this is a good addiction, right?

First off, thanks very much to everyone who gave me such great input on Women in Gaming. I’ve gone from wondering whether the panel will have enough to say to wondering if the panel will be long enough.

There is another aspect of gaming I want to explore. I’m wondering how non-gaming Significant Others view gaming. Has your gaming habit ever driven away a SO? Do they tolerate it? Have you turned a non-gaming SO into a gaming one? Mostly what I’m fishing for here is stories. And if you ARE the non-gaming SO, then I’d definitely love your input. So drag out all your old stories about that weird girlfriend/boyfriend that you once dragged to a gaming session and air them here for all to see.

Thanks!