Game of Life

Dan was off on an adventure to meet up with some friends in Halifax today, which left me to go for a run and record the radio show in the morning, before Abi was dropped off in the early afternoon. My plan was to do a great deal of unpacking and tidying - which, I'm pleased to say, I did - and I asked Abi if she fancied helping but she declined and settled down on the sofa with her iPad, bemoaning once again the lack of broadband.

It was sometime later when I suggested that she'd been on the iPad for quite a while - at this stage she was taking photos of herself pulling faces - and that she might like to find something else to do, like helping me or reading a book or whatever suited her. I think she was in a bored funk and it transpired that nothing appealed to her apart from staying on the sofa with the iPad.

I could feel myself getting cross so I told her that I was going to do some more unpacking and if she was still on the iPad in fifteen minutes' time then I would confiscate it for an hour. A couple of minutes later, from the kitchen, I heard her going upstairs and assumed she was sulking. A little while  after that, just as I was thinking on going to check she had indeed found something else to do, I heard a noise from the living room. And peeping 'round the doorframe, this is what I saw.

She'd brought down a board game from upstairs and set it out on the dining table. I thought she was simply checking all the bits were there in the box but it became apparent she was playing. A couple of hours later, when I took this picture, she was still playing. Every time I went in to see her she would chat cheerily, occasionally accepting the offer of a drink or whatever, but otherwise concentrated on her game.

I have to say that this cheered me up enormously. Of course, it made me think I should ensure she gets her nose out of her iPad more often but it also made me remember that I need to be better at putting down my phone.