The time on the wall shows 5.30 pm. You are flipping through the draft report which your boss wanted an hour ago. You are squeezing all your energies in completing the report. Your boss calls on you every 10 minutes to check on the status. Your beer drinking buddies calls you out for a drink. You politely turn them down. At about 7.00 pm, you have completed the report. Feeling exhausted but relieved, you head back home. There was an accident on the highway and the traffic was bad. What should be a 15 minutes rides home turn out to be an hour ride.
When you actually arrived at the scene of accident, you realised that it was a minor accident between 2 motorcycles but every car on both side of the lane slows down to have a look. You curse them but nonetheless take the opportunity to slow down and have a look yourself. You have finally arrived home, tired and hungry. When you open the door, your wife passes your kid to you to baby sit whilst she finishes washing. You know that you still cannot rest for now. Sounds familiar?
I am not complaining about baby-sitting my son who is unfortunately is bit hyperactive these days. I am happy to be spending time with him. My wife who been taking care of him since morning deserves a break anyway. What I normally do is that I will get him to sit on my lap whilst I “rest” whilst playing RPG style computer games. Not exactly can be called as “relaxing to the mind” since I am consistently had to watch for the Romans and defending my cities.
My son is aware of it too and the next very thing he does is to wriggle out from my grasp and onto the floor. Fine if he wants to sit on the floor. Of course, he won’t sit still…he just had to climb here and there and risk of falling. He also wants to put the small ant which he discovered “running for its life” into his mouth. So, I will carry him back to my lap whilst not losing any crucial moment on my PC game.
My wife often have to come to my rescue whenever I am stuck between my games and babysitting my son. Finally, we decided to have a baby cot which can hold my son whilst we can do our work. It is a great help for my wife when nobody is around but for me, it has certainly made me lazier (using the baby cot as the easy out whenever I wanted to play games).
My son is not happy as there is not much space for him to wander around. Nowadays, I have changed my strategy. Play games on Saturdays and Sundays morning and on week-days, sit and play with my son (well most of the time). Quality time with my son is more important than losing your cities to the Romans.
* My son waiting to be “released” from his baby cot