Time to oneself is a precious commodity. It's hard to play games as there's someone of the young crowd that needs you at that moment. With one TV, there's never really a good main game to go to that involves everyone or a good majority of them. Smash Bros works well, Bombsquad (Ouya) and anything competivieClassic games don't fly too well as they get trounced and don't have the patience to stick with it or wait a turn. Games like Minecraft, Super Mario Wii (or U), Rayman Legends-anything with co-op can deteriorate quickly on the big screen. The 2/3DS's they have gotten over time work out very well. I just have to make sure my youngest doesn't leave some DS carts in spots they shouldn't be as he likes to snag them and carry them like they are teddy bears or something.

I find I do have to force my will to do things I want beyond cooking. Cooking eveyone leaves me alone (as the kitchen is kinda small and it's hard to focus when I've got a couple conversations going on at once), so I've gotten pretty good at baking (pizzas from scratch, breads, buns, etc.). My goal is to create a little hovel under the stairs in the basement that I can set up a desktop computer to do video work and gaming at, but that space is occupied by my stuff. I'm clearing it out over time so I think by summer that should happen.

Aussie-for you because you're essentially starting from the "ground up", the child will be guided by your values. In my situation, I got into an already established family that was going through a major change. So that's a learning curve. My biggest hurdle are my three youngest as they crave the most attention, mostly from Mom. They get VERY jealous when their mom talks with me, so they tend to talk over her, make noise, get into mischief and such to make that adult conversation as painful as possible. The eldest of those three just turned 8, followed by his brother who is 5 and then my son who is 4. There's a lot of "little man" syndrome going on between the three-they can be the three musketeers one moment and then just a giant ball of whining terror the next. : sigh : but it's getting there.

Back to the games side, steam games like Amazing Frogs? goes over very well. I've introduced them to Burger Lord, which is retro in nature (think multiply competive Burger Time-last man standing) which got their interest. They can get lost in Frogs for a long time, just goofing around. Plus they look forward to the updates to see what else they can find. While some are forlorn over Zelda, I can still play Skyrim on either my desktop or my laptop workstation. I'm not very far and I find that setup clicks with me better than BOTW. Link can carry several hundred pounds of cooked foods in his magic pockets....yet he can only carry what, six swords?! And i need to go to what seems like three thousand shrines just to "level up"? Naw...