I’m thinking about these parents as I try to figure out how to attach the Kinect Sensor to the XBOX.

If you had to distill the greatest challenges faced by this generation parents down to a single word, would it start with a lowercase i?

The Ghosts of Parents Past smirk and ask: “Really? That’s what you’ve got to deal with? Little light-up thingies that amuse you and makes life easier, and some imaginary gathering place invented by a twerp in a hoodie? Tough one!”

Maybe we’re a fortunate batch of breeders gone soft as church music, but if you want to  witness real panic and chaos, sneak up on a crowded PTA meeting and shout “Sexting!” “Violent Video Games!” and watch the gathering dissolve into a spastic, gibbering bedlam.

(You expecting and newborn parents are feeling smug right now, but that first teething-biscuit encrusted smudge on your smartphone is months, not years away.)

Maybe an iPad is less dangerous to kids than a steam powered loom, but it seems like the headlines announcing the prevalence of online bullying or the threat to literacy posed by auto-correct scream at us daily. From our iPads.

And it’s not just the tech that’s got us ‘rents jumpy, it’s the rate of change. I propose we get an injunction preventing the introduction any new gadgets that kids will want until the parental controls on 80% of the old ones are turned on.

Which brings me back to my Kinect — a gadget that makes gaming more fun by scanning and storing my children’s voices, faces and body sizes. Would I trade my misgivings about this harvest (what could go wrong?) for the worries of an agrarian dad of yore? Are we that different? Woods or web, we both keep a sharp eye out for predators, but both know that sooner or later, the children must go out there alone.

It’s Isaac, my four year-old. I can feel his breath on my face. I’m snoozing on the sofa, you see, after having been up with both children since half five. They’re not excited about the new year or anything; this is standard waking-up time for them. But that’s another story.

“Centre of your chest, a bit to the left.” I say, without opening my eyes but smirking a little on the realisation that my A-level in biology has finally paid off after ten years.

But then I hear the sound of felt-tip pen against skin. Believe me, it’s a sound you recognise easily; especially when you’re a parent. I open my eyes.

Isaac is drawing a heart on his chest in a green marker pen which he managed to pilfer from his pencil case without me realising. But that’s not all. His penned heart – which, annoyingly, he’s scrawled on the right side of his chest – is just the latest in a scribble of green tattoos which reaches across the upper half of his body, all the way down his arms, and all over his face. He’s even managed to draw on his own back. He looks like one of those ‘new-age’ artists, who think that covering yourself from head to toe in ink is a good idea.

I gape at him, unable to find any words, just opening and closing my mouth like the Shubunkins who roam the murky depths of the fishtank we keep in the kitchen. That’s when Noah pops up. He’s twenty months old. And he, too, has green felt-tip pen all over his face. Together, they look like a couple of miniature Incredible Hulks, just without the ripped clothing or gargantuan strength. (The temper, though, they both have to a tee.)

My first thought is that my wife, when she comes downstairs, will completely flip; although the fire that comes out of her mouth when she tells off the kids could quite possibly burn the ink off their bodies.

My second thought is that I’m partly to blame, by falling asleep when I should have been watching them. Fear grips me, tightening my chest and causing various extremities to retract. It’s time for all hands on deck.

I grab the nearest pack of Wet Wipes – there’s always one within arm’s reach when you’ve got kids – and frantically start pawing at Isaac’s face, then at his chest, then at Noah’s face, just swiping randomly in a blind panic. The pen doesn’t come off, and I can hear my wife coming downstairs. I wipe faster and more erratically, inadvertently stretching lips and eyelids as my hand becomes a blur over the face of my children. Still nothing.

The living room door opens, and in comes my wife. Fortunately, I don’t have my glasses on, so I can’t see her expression; but I can hear her anger, I can feel it on my face, and it’s like being slapped with sandpaper.

Twitter friends suggest a variety of solutions, including toothpaste, make-up remover and Swarfega (no, I didn’t know what it was, either). Thankfully, we didn’t have to turn to such drastic measures, and eventually, after a bath and plenty of elbow grease, the pen comes off. The pouty expressions exhibited during the telling off, however, remained.

Across the calendar a line of Xs stand upon the dates that we have kissed goodbye. Each line an ending, a memory, and one step closer to hugging someone at the last possible minute.

The year goes out with a bang, just as it arrived. It spends its last week sleeping off holiday treats and shopping fatigue. As the end draws near it makes a reservation, shaves what’s hairy, and puts on something that pops. It’s a party after all, and the year deserves it.

In the wings waits the next one. It is young and naive, full of hope and promises. It watches the current year and notes what it will do differently. It watches and it waits, one eye always on the hourglass. It too will dress in something smart, but not nearly as outdated.

People pull out resolutions and change the date accordingly. The one becomes an awkward two and everyone is the wiser. They are losing weight and quitting vices. They are eating healthier and trying harder. They have waited a year to repeat themselves. The first week is the hardest, and often the only.

The children want to stay up until midnight because everyone is doing it and the reviews are fantastic. They laugh every time someone makes a joke about seeing them next year. They are alive with apple juice and Chex mix.  They are why the new year rings.

The year will fall, another will rise to take its place, and the world will carry on regardless. There may be song and a spot or two of dancing. Laughter is strongly encouraged.

Happy New Year. You deserve it.

If we didn’t have kids, on a nice winter’s evening we could wander down to the castle, and then pop into the Green Man for a drink or three.

If we didn’t have kids, we’d have two full-time incomes, and therefore be loaded, instead of having to lick crumbs out of the carpet for lunch.

If we didn’t have kids we could go on holidays without having to consider whether the resort has child-friendly attractions.

If we didn’t have kids we’d probably feel awake during the daytime.

If we didn’t have kids we might look our age, instead of looking like Mother Teresa’s backside the whole time.

But there must be something about having kids which trumps all of these things, otherwise people would never have them. We’d all be too busy having fun instead.

Right now, though, as I type this, I have a 19 month-old on my knee who keeps prodding the laptop touch pad and whinging about something I can’t understand, because he’s talking in toddler language; so I can’t really donate the brain power needed to answer this question. And so, I open it up to you, the masses, the general public. Please finish this sentence.

Now I have kids, I…

With the holidays in full swing and stores brimming with crazed parents scrambling to pickup the hottest toys, we thought we’d take a break from the Mall Madness and Plastic Pandemonium to propose a saner, greener, cheaper, and uniqu(er) alternative: a Digital Toy Box. Sure, mobile phones and tablets are great for digital games like Pac-Man and Angry Birds, but with their large touchscreens, microphones, and GPS sensors they’re also quickly becoming amazing platforms for digital TOYS.

With this in mind, GeekDad’s Daniel Donahoo and Launchpad Toy’s Andy Russell have put together the following Top 10 list of our favorite apps for open-ended, creative, constructive, and exploratory play – not just substitutes for plastic toys, but tools that empower kids to create, learn, and share through play.

So have at it, parents! Drop those car keys, put away the wrapping paper, and build your kids a Digital Toy Box!

A Digital One-Man-Band: Isle of Tune

Drums and triangles giving you a headache? Try this wonderful beat sequencer that enables kids to create and share their own songs through a whimsical and playful interface that (bonus!) teaches them a bit about rhythm, tempo, and tone along the way!

Digital Marble Play: Marble Mixer

For those of us who always struggled to position the marble just so in your index finger before flicking it into the circle, you can now introduce your kids to the grand old schoolyard game of marbles. This is an addictive game of marbles for up to four players. It encourages group gameplay around your mobile device and tests those fine motor skills as you have to weight the marble just right to get maximum points.

A Digital Puppet Theater: Toontastic

Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t include Launchpad Toys’ own app, Toontastic, on this list. Just like dolls, puppets, and action figures, Toontastic makes it easy to create your own stories through play – EXCEPT now you can actually record your stories as animated cartoons complete with narration and share them online via ToonTube! Ok, we’ll stop now… but check it out yourself (it’s free) – you’ll be amazed at what kids have created and shared.

A Digital Coloring Book: Kidoodle Pirate

This sophisticatedly simple electronic coloring book offers great story starters and then actually brings your drawings to life by animating them as part of mini-scene cartoons. Beautifully designed, intuitive, and lots of FUN – perfect for the young storyteller/illustrator in all of us.

A Digital Workbench: Casey’s Contraptions

Second only to Grandpa’s Workshop, this confoundingly addictive physics puzzler challenges kids to invent and solve their own Rube Goldberg machines using stuff they’d find around the house like tennis balls and tin cans. Great for any budding inventor/engineer!

Read the next five, after the jump…

A Digital Butterfly Net: Project Noah

Sick of your kids being sucked into digital screens? Want to get them outdoors, running around, and exploring nature? Project Noah is a brilliant photo-sharing platform for “citizen scientists” to photograph plants and animals all around us, engage in exploration “missions,” and discuss their findings with other nature enthusiasts around the globe.

A Digital Slot-Car Track: Dream Track Nation

Be it Hot Wheels, Slot-Cars, or Carrera Racers, boys (and many girls) around the world LOVE building and driving their own race tracks. Dream Track Nation makes that easier than ever and even lets you share tracks with friends once you’re done. Brilliant!

A Digital Beauty Shop: Toca Hair Salon

Ok, time to fess up. Who amongst us DIDN’T play barber at one time or another to a doll, pet… or sibling (cough, sputter, wheeze). Toca Hair Salon is just that – a whimsically fun hair styling toy for kids to cut, color, and blow-dry the hair of funny creatures and characters – all without scissors! A terrific app for social play (Toca Boca has also just released Toca Kitchen for roleplaying cooking on your iOS device).

A Digital Board Game: Pictureka

Touchscreens have turned Pictureka into a zoom in, zoom out race against the clock which tests children’s visual and observational skills as they try to find items amid the many images on the screen. This is a game that translates so well to mobile devices and engages children in play that involves memory and recognition.

A Digital Foosball Table: RAMPage

Another game for more than one player, children can use their tablet to challenge each other to foosball where the spinning footballers are replaced by marbles shot from behind the net to try to score goals. It is fast, dynamic and is another screen-based game encouraging the development of social skills through multiplayer game play.

There is so much more on offer than simply first person shooters and level-based puzzle games. What other toys would you add to your digital toy box? Let us know in the comments.

Co-authored with Andy Russell, from LaunchPad Toys

If you are after some last minute gift ideas for that geeky toddler in your life, you should check out Nerdy Baby.

Nerdy Baby is what resulted when technical and corporate communications professional Tiffany Ard had a baby and suddenly realized how “stupid” the whole scenario of her working life was. So, now Tiffany works for herself. She draws pictures of microscopes and laws of planetary motion, she creates art and gifts for infants that are all about microbiology and chemistry. She sells what she produces at Nerdy Baby.

There are some pretty cool items. Flash cards to help infants learn their ABCs and 123s – along with basic physics. The most awesome coloring book for children with a love of the sciences. And, some pretty fine onesies and baby clothes depicting everything from microscopes to dinosaurs.

Best of all, on her website Tiffany writes, “…I think you should know that whenever I receive press coverage or new wholesale accounts, my kids get a special trip to Krispy Kreme. No pressure.”

Well, hope the boys enjoy their donuts, Tiffany. Hats off from GeekDad, we love that you know it is never too early to train the geeklets.

I was holding my 18 month-old son throughout, and he sang along with every carol, rhyme and song at the top of his voice. For some reason he has quite a low singing voice, and therefore sounded a bit like an angry football hooligan, yelling the words to ‘Let it Shine’ like he was cursing at the ref.

This was not my first experience of nativity plays, having attended those in which my sisters starred (I probably did a few of my own back in the day, although I don’t remember them), and I have noticed that the same few things are common throughout them all.

And so, here they are, because this is a blog, and it’d be mean of me to tell you that I’d noticed the same things, but not actually say what they are.

The Shouting Child
Aaw, don’t kids sound sweet when they sing together, even though they’re all out of tune and if you’re really honest with yourself, it sounds pretty awful?

I rest my case.

But there’s always one child who, instead of sweetly singing each word, rhymes dripping from angelic lips, insists instead on shouting every syllable at the top of his voice. It’s usually a boy, and, for some reason, he usually has brown hair. I’ve no idea why. Although, in this case, it’s a little girl.

Judgemental Mothers

The children file into the hall to begin their play, and the audience is awash with beaming faces, jazz hands, and – at one time in history – the flash of cameras. Oh, such pride. The children assemble on the stage, and suddenly every mother in the audience turns from blushing parent to Judgemental Woman, scanning the costume of every child who stands, quivering, preparing to launch into the first carol.

And they’re comparing; comparing other kids’ costumes to their own child’s, admiring their own creations – but even more so, they’re trying to find the one child whose parents have made little to no effort at all, the child who finds themself wearing a white t-shirt with a cut-out star sellotaped to their forehead as the girl next to them sports a gaudy, glittery, padded headdress which clearly took hours to make.

Crying Babies
There’s always a crying baby in the audience, and their parent never thinks to take them out of the room and calm them down. Fact. They just stand there, bobbing their wailing newborn up and down. At what point does bobbing someone stop making them feel better? If you grabbed a distraught adult and just bobbed them for a bit, would they improve?

Overexcited Teachers
It’s inevitable that teachers will be dotted around the stage as children sing and dance around them. They’re there for moral support, usually sat cross-legged or on their knees, and they sing along to encourage the children. But there’s always one or two teachers who throw caution to the wind and see the nativity play as an opportunity to let themselves go and demonstrate their dancing prowess. They’re the ones with their hands in the air, bobbing around on their backsides, not really looking at the children at all, but instead just completely and utterly lost in the moment. They’re also the ones who look a bit sheepish when they realised they just got their funk on in front of a hundred pairs of eyes.

The Awkward Silence
Sometimes the kids sing a song, and afterwards no-one claps. There’s no obvious reason for why this happens, but I like to think that the audience has collectively made a silent yet conscious decision to refuse applause because well, let’s face it, their singing wasn’t that great and the dancing could’ve been better.

FlexiBath toys are made out of an environmentally-friendly rubbery plastic material, the kind that you think would feel really good if you chewed it. It also doesn’t contain any unsafe chemicals, so if you were to give in to temptation and have a good old nosh on the rim of one of the brightly-coloured cups you can rest assured that, although your children would view you with disdain, you wouldn’t come to any real harm.

For the full range of FlexiBath toys, click this handy link, or peruse the thumbnails below.

The cups come with a handy table, which attaches to the side of your bath thanks to a couple of big suckers. As I was standing next to a wall whilst opening the box they came in, I took the initiative to demonstrate this, thus:

I then transferred the table and cups to the bath, where my boys spent half an hour pouring ‘cups of tea’ and generally making a mess, all the while smiling like this:

The other one was shy.

They seemed to enjoy themselves: after all, by the time I pulled the plug on the bath (and as a consequence, their games) there was more water outside the tub than inside – a sure sign, if it were needed, of a fun bathtime.

For 15% off anything from the Whitestep website, use the code GPB15!