Snapshot actually killed Chaos...

...so I'm told. Our son, Hugh has an obsession with Skylanders. It's a computer game that he has only played once - at a friend's house - but he talks about it all the time, rattling on, weighing up the goodies and the baddies in his head. Asking when he can get it. Sixty seven times a day.

When they are babies, they eat, sleep (or not) and dribble and you wait patiently to find out who they are and what their passions will be. I hadn't really expected this one. Well, I hadn't expected him to bake a cake on a few crumbs alone.

Of course there are all these sage warnings about the addictive nature of these games and I'm an old hippy at heart, wanting them to play on rope swings or with stones/sticks/whatever.

Added to that, Skylanders seems to be some kind of capitalist marketing genius where adults buy the kids a Starter Pack with a few 'free' characters, only to be plagued for the next ten years when the kids want to buy 'another' character, just because their pal did. (I hear rumours of £6? £10?)

And yet, his enthusiasm is somehow touching. Seeing his wee brain tick over, plotting, planning, rehearsing every imagined scenario on the When-I-get-Skylanders spectrum. 

My mum says I am too soft on them, and she is probably right. I am still holding off, King Canute in front of the waves. Is anyone else with me?

Meanwhile, Tess, is happy with her furry monkey. She too makes up scenarios all the time - Monkey didn't have a tutu for her ballet class, so she ate a hole in the middle of a pancake and used that. Well, of course she did.