Daddy Day Care

Today I'm looking after ET alone as K has gone away to visit our friends up near Leeds. I joked we'd have a boys night, with pizza and movies and beer. Well, it was only partly a joke; we've got pizza for dinner, we'll probably end up watching Toy Story 3 for the umpteenth time and we'll be replacing beer with water. Yeah. We're hardcore.

Currently, as I sit here typing this, ET is sharing his Mini Cheddars with our dog, Watson. They're thick as thieves, this pair, and have been since day one. The living room floor wouldn't look out of place in a scene from Home Alone, littered as it is with various toys and books, each uniquely painful to step on barefoot. I ask ET to tidy some away and he looks about him at the chaos he has unleashed, shrugs and turns back to force-feeding the dog, who seems oblivious to the fact he's sitting on a small plastic Mickey Mouse figure.

On my rapidly-dying tablet I'm watching episodes of Community, a favourite show of mine. Having recently finished season 5 I've gone back to start from the beginning again (what better place to start other than the beginning?). I'd forgotten how relatively normal those early episodes are, particularly in comparison to later seasons. In fact, it isn't until quite late in season 1, the episode Modern Warfare to be precise, that you see the real craziness that Community always had running under the surface come to the fore in a glorious, action movie homage-laden slice of fried comedy gold.

Once I've finished writing this, I'll play Pirates vs Knights, a new game ET and I play with some of his HappyLand toys from Early Learning Centre. It essentially involves lining up his knights along his castle whilst I do the same with the pirates on their ship before we start throwing plastic balls at them, trying to knock the other person's team over before they knock down yours. That's the idea, anyway. With ET only being two and a half, he doesn't really understand the 'rules' and often gets carried away, throwing balls at his own figures and, when he inevitably runs out of balls, throwing his actual figures.

We've discovered recently that he's a terrible cheat; my sister and brother-in-law bought him a HappyLand remote controlled racetrack for Christmas. ET will regularly smack your car off the track, take your controller or decide he wants to swap cars when he sees you're winning. He also only drives backwards and regularly shouts 'Beep beep! Out me way!'. Lewis Hamilton eat your heart out...

I'm trying to decide what game, if any, I'll play once ET has gone to bed. I'm currently making my way through the foggy streets of Old London Town in Assassin's Creed Syndicate; I'm also playing through The Last of Us, determined to finish it this time. The Uncharted Collection is sitting waiting to be played on my hard drive, although I'm in less of a rush to play these as I have finished all three games before on PS3. I'd still like to get them completed before Uncharted 4 shows up in April, however.

Finally, I'm trying to think of interesting regular features to post on here going forward. I have a few in mind, so look out for those appearing soon.