One thing that's really cool about kids is that they have no real sense of the plausible and the implausible, and they don't really know how the world works. The result of this is that their games can sometimes be amazingly surrealistic.

Yesterday I was having a really hard time getting any work done because the baby was just not settling down. So what I had to do was to keep her in a cradle in the kitchen because it has a little dog toy in it with a button that makes it bark, laugh, play music and display flashing lights, all of which is just insanely entertaining to a two-month-old. Every time she fell asleep for a little while I would run into the living room, grab my laptop, and do a little work until she started fussing again.

Meanwhile, my pre-schooler wanted to play. The specific game she wanted to play was “Rocket Ship,” in which both of us were “space captains” flying to different planets to pick up supplies “for all the people in the town.” We had to fly to the Christmas Decorations Planet, the Planet of Fizzy Water Bottles, the Planet of Ribbons, the Planet of Presents For The Kids and the Planet of Christmas Trees (notice a theme here?) all while avoiding asteroids and space monsters. Since I couldn't really leave the cradle without angering the baby (except when she was asleep, in which case I had to run and work) the whole game was played on a wooden chair next to the cradle. It might not have been ad ideal situation, but it sure was fun.