As most of you know by now, Cone and I have added a child to our household. Our son is the reason that I have been MIA on the website and my reviews and articles are few and far between. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love being a mom more than anything, more than gaming even. But this is not an article about being a mom and how wonderful it is, after all this is a gaming website you are going to. This is the article that I have been meaning to write since we brought Ethan home from the hospital. This is the article about when gaming met the baby.

Let me give you a quick history of our gaming life…once upon a time there was a married couple that spent a lot (I mean a lot) of time sitting in front of the TV with a controller in their hands. They would sometimes spend entire Saturdays playing through Halo for the 900th time. They would spend hours upon hours on Ratchet and Clank or any other game they were into at the time. Then Dots got pregnant and Dots had a baby. Our lives were taken by storm by the new bundle of joy. Mesmerized by every move and cry we spent all of our time loving and caring for our child. Soon, we noticed that the Xboxes were putting personals online and that the Gamecube and PS2 were volunteering to spend time with relatives. The Gamecube had a lengthy visit with my sister. We decided it was about time to pick up our controllers and give playing a try again. Once we swept the cobwebs away, we were good to go; or so we thought.

Let me tell you a little known fact about babies: they know when you are doing something other than devoting 100% of your attention to them. We couldn’t get two minutes in of game time before we had to put the control down and tend to baby. So, we gave up. Well, I did anyway. I came to resolution that Cone would have to be the gamer in the family now and I would just have to sit and watch. But Cone felt bad, so Cone didn’t game. Then before you knew it the consoles were holding picket signs up demanding to be played. As time went on we realized that we had to make time for gaming, we were part of a gaming website. Plus, Cone was being to have convulsions of the thumb from gaming withdrawals. So, we tried again, this time with a new method.

Cone would play for a while and then he would take the baby. Then I would play for a while and then take the baby back. You’re all smart people, you get the idea. This was all fine for a while. Let me tell you another fact about babies: they grow up and want you to play with them really fast. Soon one of us holding him was not good enough. He needed to know what the other parent was doing while he was being held. We invested in some entertainment for him to try and ease his boredom. Sixty dollars and one Fisher Price Jumperoo later we had found our own personal savior. I keep meaning to write Fisher Price a letter and thank them for the wonderful invention that is the Jumperoo, but I just haven’t found the time. Our son will jump for hours at a time completely content. Okay, I exaggerate; he jumps for 20-30 minutes at a time with total contentment. But still…a half of an hour is better than none of an hour. Do the math! All was well in our gaming world once again.

Then the baby grew some more. Now he doesn’t want to sit in his Jumperoo for even 20 minutes. He is trying to crawl. He scoots around on the floor, but has to be rescued (a lot) from the licks of our loving, dear, sweet, totally psycho hyper active, bounce off the walls dog, Molly. So gaming while he is on the floor is not an option. What are two parents to do? The Halo edition Xbox is threatening to take the cat hostage if we don’t act fast. I am going to tell you another fact about babies: when they get to the point where they are sleeping through the night, they get strapped with a little thing called a bedtime. The bedtime! What a life saver this is. I used to hate having a bedtime growing up. I used to fight tooth and nail going to sleep forcing my mother to lay in bed with me, bring me water, tell me stories, etc. Now, as a parent, I totally, 100% understand why God invented bedtimes. I never like it when my mom would tell me A