It's not like there's anything REALLY wrong with board games... Or actually there is. Board games are amazingly antisocial. It's the perfect way to hang out with people without worrying about what to talk about because it's impossible to really talk about anything meaningful while playing a board game. Playing fills in all the awkward silence moments so any topic will do and none of them are even really discussed. Imagine you start talking about a movie, "I went to the cinema last week - your turn - and I saw a comedy- that's MY avatar - with Brad Pitt. - my turn already?". The only benefit with such horrible conversation atmosphere is that whenever you realize you started talking about a boring topic, you can just stop talking and no one will even notice. 
In a way having board games in my life makes me feel old. When I was 18 I really protested against people bringing a board game to a perfectly good party. We had these really loud parties - cocktails, beer, sauna, Rammstein playing in the back, lights are dim and people are jumping up and down and vigorously headbanging.
Now that's what I call a party! Until someone brought along Alias or Trivia (popular board games). 
You can just imagine someone coming to that sort of a party with their own requests, "It's too dark to read the cards so can we please turn on the lights? And turn down the music, we can't play like this. And you can't dance here - we're playing here!". I developed a dislike for board games very early on. I concluded that board games are for people who are too boring to really party, or well, you know, for OLD people*. Now that I can't really party like that anymore (because I'm old), board games have become an ideal excuse to invite people over. I love to invite people over and have a fun social event. One problem though - when you get a bunch of people in the same room and create the worse possible conditions for conversation, is it really a social event anymore? Compared to sitting at home and visiting Internet forums, I'd say the answer is YES, a board game evening is indeed a social event. Still, I usually prefer simple dinner parties to board game evenings.
One game redeemed board games for me - Arkham Horror. You see, with most board games there's only one winner and a bunch of losers. Doesn't really help create a sense of a united group of friends. However, with Arkham Horror either everyone's a winner or everyone's a loser.
All players work together for a common cause. After Arkham Horror Erkki found us another cool game - Pandemic, which might actually be my favourite board game. Not because it's better than Arhkam Horror, because it's not better. I like it more because I always enjoy playing it. It's pointless and repetitive and I've only ever played it with one other couple. They're great people but they have quite different background from mine. We don't share common hobbies so we don't really have common topics for discussion. And this right here is the only situation when board games are the best activity - I get to hang out with them while avoiding all those awkward moments when we run out of small talk. So perhaps board games can be called "social training wheels". Makes a lot of sense if you think about the major board games - more specifically role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons. Plenty of socially inexperienced geeks find friends by playing role-playing games.
Don't think I'm pointing my finger at any of my friends here. I myself found nearly all of my social network in Tartu through role-playing. Excellent way to meet smart people. As social training wheels, I feel board games are quite pointless to play with friends. I can even offer a real-live observation that supports this idea. My friends happily get together every week to play a role-playing game
and it's a common problem that people just start to discuss out-of-game topics and simply forget to play the game. Game provided an excuse to get together and it seems they mostly do it for company. The game is very intriguing and my friends are curious to experience what happens next but it really is an effort to keep out-of-game talk to a minimum. All this combined, the perfect board game event goes like this: people are invited together to play a board game but then they have so much to talk about that people forget to play the game.
Baby update: The frequent wake-ups got so tedious that I put her on an eating schedule during the day. The logic behind it is to get her used to eating less often so she doesn't get that hungry during the night. I started using the practical schedule my mother mentioned a long time ago and I feed the baby at 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21 o'clock. At night I kept to the same 3-hour pattern although I won't wake her up if she misses a meal. So while she woke up every hour asking for food, I only fed her every third time. I started this on Monday and I saw real progress in a couple of nights already. And then she got ill. She had a one-night-only 38.0 degrees Celsius fever but because of a stuffy nose she woke up ALL THE TIME. I only got 4 hours of disrupted sleep three nights in a row. Then she got better and she really does sleep three hour stretches in between feedings. I'm trying not to get my hopes up after only two good nights but I'm really happy about getting some sleep.
I also introduced my own version of good-night porridge yesterday. The ready made brands in the store all had fruits Siiri hasn't tested or they contained gluten which I also haven't introduced to her diet yet. I found a baby rice porridge powder with no additives. I mixed it with some water and a little extra virgin olive oil to produce a bland oily greenish goo.
It looked quite horrible and it's not what I'd call food but surprisingly it tasted much better than potato puree and Siiri liked it. 
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* "old" people - all settled down and living a grown-up life, often with a family. It's not about age. It's about life stage.
If my calculation is correct I got about three hours of sleep last night.
). Then there was the 4-month sleep regression, then teething and a stuffy nose. None of those were pleasant but at least the reasons were understandable. After the second tooth appeared everything was perfect... for a few days. And then it got worse (understatement of the month).
At first I thought it was just a frequent eating habit from when she was teething. As a solution I tried my best to feed her as rarely as possible to get the eating schedule back on track. It usually works but this time it didn't. Baby still woke up just as often and sometimes even 30 minutes after a long feeding. Hunger wasn't the thing that was waking her up. Then I assumed it must be her 6-month growth spurt. Maybe she FEELS LIKE she is hungry even when she's not. Growth spurt would have the opposite solution so I tried feeding her as often as possible for the growth spurt to pass. This didn't help either. In fact it made things even worse because the frequent eating disturbed her sleep even further. I considered letting her cry herself to sleep a few night in a row but I felt too sorry for the neighbours. I was out of ideas so it was Google to the rescue! 
One week was totally nuts here. Erkki was abroad because of his work and I was alone with the baby for 5 days. It would have been fine except I had a bit of a cold and baby was STILL teething. And to top it off, they had just turned the clock (daylight savings time) so that baby's sleep pattern was all messed up. I tried to get her to follow her previous nap schedule and she kept waking nearly every hour at night. On Thursday I finally gave in. I threw baby's nap schedule out the window and spent my energy on shushing her during the night. It only took one night for baby to stop waking up so often. The next night she was doing 3-4 hour stretches and was a much happier baby during the day. I think I managed surprisingly well but my mind was very scattered, hence no post.
It made me glad, but apparently not as much as baby. She was giggling three days straight. If she was a little older I would have started to look for pot. 
