I don't like video games, and I never really have. To be honest, I did used to play Pac Man when I was a kid, and Nintendo Duck Hunt was pretty fun. I used to be pretty good at Pole Position. But I've never put anything like the hours into video gaming that a lot of other people do. Actually, even my mother spends much more time playing video games than I do.

So why have I started playing video games lately? It's because of having two daughters, one of whom is just six weeks old. My older daughter, who is three, spends all day waiting for me to get done working so we can play some games together. Ideally these would be actual games based on her outlandish pre-schooler imagination, such as the “Birthday Game” (in which I pretend to be “changing robots” and she suddenly arrives as a super-hero and beats me up) or the “Drive a Car” game (in which I pretend to be a witch trying to turn her into a dog). My daughter seems to feel that the names of games should have nothing to do with the topic of the game.

Ever since the new daughter came along, it has become extremely difficult to play these games with the older daughter. We can manage it some of the time, but not if the baby is squirming and wiggling crazily in my arms while I'm trying to play.

Video games can be set up so that I can play them while I'm sitting down, and I only need one hand available to pull it off. I can work the back-and-forth arrows on Space Invaders while my daughter hits the space button to shoot at the enemy.

It isn't ideal, but at least it makes it possible for us to spend some time and have some fun together, in a situation where we otherwise might not be able to.