My daughter is three this weekend. To commemorate this momentous occasion, I’m going to record another of her five favourite games (and she’ll get some presents, too):

• Doggies – I bought a bag of small plastic dogs from a charity shop. I am always that generous. Anyway, my daughter loves this bag of dogs. There are about 100 of the little hounds and there’s accessories, too. Her favourite accessory is the toilet. The dogs spend a lot of time paying money to the shopkeeper to go the toilet. A shop of toilets run by dogs? Not one I’d like to visit in real life.
• Dinos in Houses - Similarly to the small plastic dogs, my daughter has a tin of dinosaurs – which has also been invaded by a collection of insects. Which means evolution has got mixed up and Triceratops now hangs out with his mate over-sized ladybird. My daughter uses her wooden blocks to build houses for the dinos and gets upset if you don’t play the game properly. And that’s always difficult when you don’t know the rules.
• Families - We’ve got another child on the way and my daughter is into families right now. Similarly to earlier favourite games, ‘Families’ relies on the participation of willing soft toys. The toys are not necessarilly related, which means the father is sometimes a dog and the mother is a cow. Another example of evolution gone mad, I’m afraid. One of the toys plays the little girl and the mummy toy has a baby in its tummy. Then they all go on the train for a holiday.
• Peppa Pig - One for Mummy, this one. My daughter likes Mummy to play a subtle variation on ‘Families’ with Peppa Pig and her clan. She’s got a house and a school, and everyone hangs out together. Once again, she gets upset if you get the rules wrong. Which is a particular problem for non-plussed Daddy.
• Explorers – Another game based on soft toy participation. Monkey and Leopard go to Sock Valley and find the Golden Egg. Sometimes Confused Robot comes along for the ride and gets everyone’s names wrong. And French Otter, who is actually a stoat and who says ‘de temps en temps’ a lot.

My daughter is now fast approaching two and a half years old. Seeing as a month or two in a small child’s world is equivalent to a couple of years in a balding father’s life, I thought I would update her list of favourite games. Some of the old favourites – Shop, Cave, Doctor’s – are still popular. But some new entrants are favoured, too:

• Garage – My daughter recently acquired (via the kind benevolence of her Nanny at a car boot sale) a retro Fisher Price garage. Fisher Price people and their cars do not staff the garage. Vans, sports cars and a tractor – all gifts from her Nanny to play with on the garage – run the establishment.
• Piggy and Daddy – More a song than a game, this synth-backed classic has it all. Demo tune three on my daughter’s Xmas present keyboard is otherwise known as ‘Piggy and Daddy’, a catchy ditty about a man, his daughter’s puppet pig and the fact that they are such good friends.
• King of the Castle – I get to act like an idiot and climb ‘the seven year old and over’ climbing frame when we visit the local play park. The reason is that my daughter hangs around at the bottom, telling me she is the Dirty Rascal. When Mummy is there as well, the Dirty Rascal – and her associate – becomes the Gruesome Twosome.
• Animals in the Tree – When we leave the play park, we hit the trees in the big park. Toys are told to climb the tree and then my daughter shouts: ‘Be careful’. Subtle variants include ‘Climb the Tree’, while Daddy has to hold his daughter as she (pretends) to climb the tree, and ‘Look for Creatures’, an investigation into ants living on the trees.
• Upstairs – Which basically involves going upstairs and playing a series of games with the soft toys, such as ‘Shop’ and ‘Cave’. Looking out the upstairs window is popular, too – especially when Mummy walks past or an Ocado van drives past. Or the man opposite arrives home from work. And opens his front door. Which he does, strangely, every day.