Recently I’ve been playing a game called Minecraft. If you’re unaware of the title, it’s a “sandbox game” that allows you to build fantastic (or mundane) creations out of simple blocks. It sounds basic, and at first glances looks basic, but it’s deceptively complex and engrossing. You can make whole cities in Minecraft’s procedurally-generated infinite worlds, and people have worked on shared servers to create huge ones. People using the basic logic gates and wiring available in Minecraft have actually built working computers within the game.

When I described this to someone they said “oh so basically computer Lego for grown-ups”.

I agreed, and then realised that actually it’s not just Lego for grown-ups, it’s Lego for kids too. It, or something similar, might even be the Lego for Tom’s generation. In the same way that I as a kid eschewed complex and fiddly bits of metal Meccano for fun and colourful plasic blocks, Tom might skip Lego and move directly to virtual blocks in a virtual world.

Tom will implore me to “play Minecraf!”, and then sit between my legs as we fly over oceans, forests and deserts looking for an open space to start building.

“Make a house!” he’ll direct me. “Blue house!”

So we start stacking up blue blocks in a square, laying the foundations for a house. Soon, with further directions from the small site foreman, we have a blue house complete with door, windows and a roof.

Once, to appease the Abney and Teal obsessed little boy, I made a giant Neep.

He’s hollow, with a bedroom inside, and a little hatch that closes when you pull a lever. I think that if it was at all possible Tom would live there.

Houses are important, especially when night arrives, because in the world of Minecraft that’s when the monsters come out.

In “sandbox” mode the monsters can be turned off altogether, and even when they’re present they wander around passively. In “survival” mode they’re vicious and deadly.

I spent my first “day” in Minecraft (before I let Tom watch) desperately digging out a cave before nightfall. I then spent the entire night with a zombie staring at me through the small airhole I’d left in the wall of the chamber. It was the first time I’ve been a frightened by a game for a long time.

So, naturally I hestitated before letting Tom see the monsters. But I came to realise that Tom is ready to be “a little bit scared” about things. The “MONTORS!” in Minecraft (as Tom calls them) are actually just a little bit scary. Daylight makes them go away, and they’re blocky and a bit silly. Montors aren’t real, and Tom gets that.

So we sleep in our giant Neep, ignoring the monsters outside, and the next morning we go and make something brand new.

Or blow things up with TNT, that’s fun too.

Last night he went to bed with no visions of sugarplums dancing in his head. In the morning he rushed into our bedroom as usual, without even spotting the stocking presents carefully placed by his bed.

Ok, he loved his brand new toy toolbox, and made the proper appreciative “wow!” noises when the new slide appeared in the garden, but it seemed as far as he was concerned this was just an exceptionally good Sunday morning, not a special morning.

Then, sitting at the dinner table, something seemed to click. He looked at the huge spread, the surrounding extended family all decked in paper hats, took a bite of a bacon-wrapped sausage and exclaimed to us all loudly “merry Christmas”!

I looked into his face, calm but tinged with worry. A lot to take in for a little boy.

I suddenly found myself feeling like I’d horribly betrayed him. My boy, with whom I’ve a bond the likes of which I didn’t realise was possible.

And now this mewling pink thing had come along and was ruining it. I could see him thinking it. Worse, in the back of my mind I was thinking it too.

Guilt for betraying my son, guilt for even thinking that for a moment about my daughter. A double whammy. Luckily Jane was on hand to spot and cure the wobbly lip. Okay, a bit more than a wobbly lip.

I’m reconciling it in my mind now. This was the day that Tom learned life doesn’t revolve around him. An important lesson, but one I’d wanted to put off as long as possible. I know that Tom won’t hold a grudge, and that I’m capable of loving two children just as much as one. Just it doesn’t quite feel possible, right now. I wonder if all second-time dads feel this way?

At first we weren’t particularly concerned. There was precedent; Tom’s uncle, my mother-in-law reliably informed us, didn’t speak early either (he doesn’t speak a huge amount now but he must have said enough at some point to get that job at IBM). But after a while the Overly Worried Parent genes kicked in and I started to surf the parenting websites to find out just what kind of milestones a toddler of two should be hitting with language.

The trouble is, like child development itself, the guidance is varied and hard to pin down. The milestones also seemed to be rather far apart: “by 18 months your child will probably be doing this and by 3 years they should be doing this,” yes but what about when he’s two??

We think he’s inside the boundaries of “normal”, but it was worrying enough that we decided to talk to our health visitor about it, and it’s something we’re going to discuss with her at Tom’s two-year MOT.

Since we brought it up with the health visitor, almost on cue Tom has started to make a few leaps with talking. He’s adding a lot more words to his spoken vocabulary. He didn’t seem to like to even try to say words that he couldn’t make the sounds for, but suddenly new consonants are coming, and with them new words. Tonight at bedtime he managed a “night night”, when before he’d stuck to his all-time favourite “bye bye”.

This morning we also heard the first ever sentence from his lips. Words actually joined together to impart new meaning!

I’d made a visit to the en-suite during the night and followed the unspoken “if it’s yellow let it mellow” rule to avoid disturbing sleepers.

At dawn, Tom rushed into the bedroom with his usual remarkable caffeine-free morning vitality, and headed straight into the apparent adventure playground that is the bathroom. A few seconds later I heard the flush go…

… followed by small voice announcing “bye bye wee wee!”

A orator in the making, I think you’ll agree.

Not bad for a former God of Entropy I think.

Actually his favourite toys aren’t toys at all. He seems to understand that hammering away at a V-Tech activity centre won’t actually achieve anything, but a single deft depression of That Button That Daddy Explicitly Told Me Not To Touch will have much more exciting results (including said Daddy jumping up and growling amusingly).

His absolute favourite toy is the washing machine. This is button and knob nirvana, and as an added bonus it also has a hatch that you can concertedly pile clothes in to (and out of… and back into again… and out again… for hours).

Seriously, if we could just trust him with the powder and fabric conditioner we could buy a dozen washing machines and have quite a nice little laundry business on our hands.

Hmm, yep, even after thinking it through properly, I can’t see any flaw in that idea.

Really though, I shouldn’t be surprised that Tom seems to be turning into a little gadget freak. This is the world he was born in to. Even when he was very little I used to amuse him with toys and videos on an iPhone. Now he’s reached the stage where he can switch my iPhone on, slide the switch to unlock the screen, swipe through the screens of icons, find the folder full of toddler toys, and open up The Three Little Pigs story app; all in the time it takes to change a nappy.

For a little boy who can’t yet reliably make it across the front room without falling over, I find this seriously impressive.

Make sure that you also bring suitable footwear so that when the tiny stream he’s paddling in develops into a sizeable pond, you’re not left standing on the bank while he triumphantly wades into the middle, and then ignores all entreaties to leave.

And when this inevitably happens, make sure you immediately take your shoes off and wade in to get him before he drops down on his arse, soaking all his clothes and bringing the trip to the cold April beach to an abrupt end.

Not that we’d do anything like that, of course. Ahem.

We did, at least, bring a change of clothes.

What I’d forgotten was the park has a mini train line running from one end of a lake to the other. So Tom got to have his first ever train ride. And I got to fill up on some pure Dad Mojo.

Here’s a little video I made entirely with my iPhone.

When Tom watched it for the first time, he went “choo chooooo”. It was about then my Dad Mojo gauge went “pop”.

We took him to see his grandmother today. While I was carrying him into her kitchen, he looked over my shoulder and waved his head from side to side, going “ttich, ttitch”.

I followed his line of sight and found he was looking at a clock on the kitchen wall. He’s always been fascinated by clocks, particularly the one in his other grandma’s front room. She always holds him up to it to let him see it chime, and makes a “tick tock” sound while waving her head from side to side. Sometimes Tom vaguely mimicked this, but I always assumed he was just copying his grandma. But, amazingly (to me) that’s now embedded in his little synapses: when you see a clock you wobble your head and go “tick tock”.

What’s even more amazing (to me) is that the clock in one grandma’s front room is nothing like the one in his other grandma’s kitchen. The kitchen one is shaped like a fat bird, with large out-of-shape numbers and spindly legs. The other one is an austere wall clock with a plain white face and roman numerals. In the family tree of clockness, they’re occupying opposite corners, and don’t really talk much other than at weddings and funerals.

In Toms head though, they’ve been successfully grouped and classified as “things you go ‘tick tock’ at”.

As if to prove the point today, Tom also added Mah-mahs to his repertoire of classified objects. Mah-mahs are the big birds you get in ponds and feed bread too. They’re called Mah-mahs because that’s the sound they make. You might think they go “quack quack”, but if you listen as Tom has, you’ll realise they really go “mah mah”.

We took him to a duck pond today, and Tom started mimicking the sound they made as the ducks rushed to see us. It was difficult to tell if he was just making the sound because he was hearing it. So, when we got him home I showed him some pictures of ducks, and sure enough, they were Mah-mahs.

And the pictures of clocks were “tick tocks”, together with the essential wobbly head.

This probably sounds like an over-enthusiastic dad marvelling at some tiny thing that every single baby does. In a way, I suppose it is. This isn’t Tom even speaking really, in that he’s not repeating “proper” words or sentences.

But he is moving towards speech, inside his bonce are now cells that can abstractly link “a thing that looks like a clock” with a combination of noise and action.

I am an over-enthusiastic dad marvelling at each new little thing. But if that’s not marvellous, then I don’t know what is.

Most birthdays and Christmases I’d get a Lego model. Starting with the basic building block sets, then the Space Lego sets with the fancy V-shaped wing bits, then the grown-up Technical Lego sets (you could tell they were grown-up because they had holes in).

I’d empty the bits out on the dining table. Lay out the immaculately-produced manual, and turn to the first page. Looking at the first diagram, finding the bits that matched the picture. Savouring the anticipation.

“Would you like me to help?” my Dad would ask. Innocently.

…

Twenty minutes later I’d be sitting, chin in hands, frustratedly watching my Dad make the model.

He wouldn’t get away with it for long. Mum would come in and say “oi! Let Simon make it!!” Dad would reluctantly relinquish the model.

I’d dismantle what he’d done and start again from scratch, silently vowing that when I was a Dad, I’d never barge in and monopolise my son’s toys.

No, I didn’t. Even writing that I realised I was kidding myself. I vowed that one day I’d barge in and monopolise MY son’s toys.

I’ve tried to deny it. When Tom got a lovely set of building blocks for his birthday, I tried to let him learn to play with them at his own pace.

It didn’t last long. I thought I’d just help a little.

Tom, quite rightfully, was having none of it.