Playing around

Spending time with my newborn son is my favorite pastime these days. Everyday, I seem to see something new in him. In the last few days, he has started to keenly observe our faces and move his lips as though to say something. He is also able to move his head and watch us when we walk past him. My wife and I thought the time might be just right to buy some toys to stimulate his visual and aural senses. So, yesterday, we took our little boy to ToysRus for the first time. Of course, he didn't seem to be too excited about it and he was asleep the whole time. But, I am always excited about toy shops. I am excited about massive train sets, radio controlled cars and complex Lego blocks. I am always tempted to buy some of the more innovative ones even though it may not be appropriate for my age ! My childhood was always filled with plenty of board games and books. My home was the favorite haunt for most of my friends during summer vacations. We spent hours playing such games. On the contrary, I also missed out on playing in the mud and experiencing the great outdoors.

As I grew up, computer games seemed to thrill me a lot. A couple of the very first games that excited me were Pacman and Digger. To me, playing them on the 640K 8086 machine with a green monitor seemed to be the best thing that had happened in the technology world at that time. Later on, I took a strong liking for 3D games. Wolf3D was the first 3D game I played and I loved it. Down the years, as my career grew, I hardly played any games. I am still turned on by the various XBoxes and Playstations of today but have never played even a single game on one of those consoles (What a shocker !). Last week, when a couple of my colleagues invited me for a game of Quake3 on the network, I thought that I will get back into the groove again. But surprisingly, 15 minutes of playing that game gave me motion sickness !!! When I went home, I was still feeling very sick. I lied down for a while and then felt better afterwards. It is a shame but a sure indicator that I am turning the corner (yup, the big 30) this month. I know that I will not be playing any more of those games but I would surely like to see the interest grow in my son.

Coming back to what we bought at the store yesterday, amongst the rattles, colored links and activity gym, there was one interesting item. This was called "Flutterbye Dreams Lullabye Birdies Soother". It is a crib toy in which a few birds on a tree move around in an animatronics-like fashion. It also has bird sounds and some soothing music to it. You may ask, "Ok, whats the big deal ?". Well, it has a small projection light at the top and so, when you switch to that mode, it projects a film of very colorful pictures (of birds and nature) on the ceiling. To many of you, this may not be anything exciting. I was just awestruck at the beauty of the bright colors in the dark. More than my son, I was completely enthralled by this toy. Of course, later on during the night, he seemed very engrossed in it too. He kept staring at the toy, kept kicking his legs all the time and mumbled some mumbo-jumbo all the time. I am glad that he likes what daddy likes ! :-)