Leveling Up the Baby

I'm thrilled to present our first guest poster, Naomi Bolton from Cape Town, South Africa. You can check out her website here, and read her husband's video game reviews on Game Ramble. If you'd like to write a guest post for AGW, here's how!

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In retrospect, after seeing my husband celebrate his first Father's Day this year, I realized that having a gamer daddy does sometimes have an influence on how our little Chocobo is raised. Witnessing this unique approach to parenthood often makes me smile, but I do agree with him that it would have been nice if we could just sometimes switch to an "Easy" difficulty setting. And that coming from someone who always plays all his games on "Hard."

Does "Enable Ironman" mean you have 19 kids and must put your life on display in a reality TV show?

Here are some examples of how Chocobo's life might be slightly different from that of "normal," non-gamer babies:

* Her first ultrasound photo was proudly modified to include a controller and headset. My husband captioned it with "The scan did not show whether it was a boy or a girl but it definitely looks like its gonna be a gamer." After she was born, the trend continued and she appeared in multiple photos with these peripherals.

* Her growth is measured with a Wiimote. She started off being only one and a half Wiimotes tall and has now more than doubled that number to a whopping three and a quarter Wiimote lengths.

* In utero, she had to put up with being shaken about during some "Just Dance" sessions, and in the early months Mom perfected the art of playing Guitar Hero while breastfeeding.

* Dad has no issues with holding Chocobo to soothe her, as long as he can keep his controller and set up a high score at the same time. As she gets older, this becomes increasingly harder, since she wants to join in and inevitably ends up killing his character.

* Daddy attempts to sing her to sleep with "Jiggly Puff is happy..." Unfortunately this method is not always super effective.

* Reaching developmental milestones is referred to as "unlocking achievements," and other babies are called "noobs."

* When Daddy has to look after her, he entertains Chocobo with all kinds of interesting geeky things, like playing around with the webcam and turning her into some cute one-eyed monster.

* At six months of age, Chocobo already knows that you are supposed to bang on a keyboard and move a mouse – and does so with great enthusiasm!

* When it is time to get her to swallow medicine, Daddy's glowing gaming mouse serves as an excellent distraction tool. Works like a charm.

* Some father-daughter conflict is to be expected in the foreseeable future, as soon as Chocobo decides that Daddy's dolls (aka action figures) are prettier than her own.

Question from the Editor:
Anyone else willing to share their interesting tales about geeky parenting? :) 

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About the Author

Naomi Bolton has always loved gadgets and techy stuff and is also into photography and graphic design. Having a geek for a father, she grew up playing a lot of computer games. Nothing, however, could have prepared her for the obsession her husband calls a "hobby." At times she also gets all caught up in the magical, addictive world of gaming, but lately she spends more time playing with her baby daughter.