Family Alive

Analise has always enjoyed games.  She’s amazing at playing Memory.  At first – probably a year ago, when she’d just turned 3 – I’d let her win, until I realized she was better than me.  We play the Hungry Caterpillar game, Chutes and Ladders, Blokus (mostly just making designs with the tiles), and Dora Dominoes.  She’s slowly learned about taking turns, but often she doesn’t get parts of the game.  For example, with Chutes and Ladders she really wants to land on the slide, which takes you backwards down the board, instead of towards the winning space.  And she likes to spin the spinner until she gets the number she wants.  We don’t mind playing her way, because it’s all fun and games 🙂

Tonight we tried Uno for the first time.  First off, Analise didn’t nap today, so she was a little teary as it was nearing bedtime.  She did really well keeping track of her cards.  She caught on to the aspect of laying a matching color or number.  We were all down to just a couple cards.  But when Brian’s turn came around and he had to draw and draw and draw to get a card to lay, Analise burst into tears.  She wanted to get more cards, too.  Brian happily passed some over to her.  We told her she needed to get rid of the cards to win, and she cried that she didn’t want to win.  So we gave her more cards, a whole handful, and she giggled through her tears.  We played on and on, giving Analise extra cards, everytime we both got too many.  I was sure if she just got down to one and experienced the thrill of yelling “Uno!” she’d want to win, but we never got that far.  And after I won, she was more than happy to hear that she “won” with the most cards.

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em… and know when to pass them to Analise!

Updated – right after we finished playing, I went downstairs and posted a note to my facebook account while Kristine was unbeknownst to me posting this blog! Here is my version of the story:

So Kristine and and I are pretty competitive about things – games usually end up in intense battles. Analise just came down the stairs and asked if I wanted to play “Tigger and Pooh”. I stop and go upstairs to investigate and find her and my wife getting ready to play a game of uno using a tigger and pooh uno deck of cards. They deal me in and we are off! Everything is going well. Analise has picked up perfectly on the concept of either matching the color or the number shown on the card just laid down. So everything is fine until Analise plays a card that I can’t match. This also happens to leave her with only two cards in her hands. As I keep on drawing more and more cards without finding a match, Analise starts to wail and sob because I am getting all the cards and she only has two. We try to explain to her that she is about to win. “But I don’t want to win!!!” she sobs. So I come up with a solution: every time I draw a card that doesn’t match I’ll just give it to Analise – and I toss in half of my huge stack of cards for good measure. Well, that doesn’t go over too well with Kristine so she gives Analise a lot of her cards, too – leaving the two of us to duke out. I’ll wrap it up by saying that Kristine and I both make it down to “uno”, but she ends up winning when Analise plays a 7 (out of order) which Kristine also has in her hand. Analise is happy because she has the most cards when the game ends. That’s uno with my wife and my 4 year old! Now it’s back to work.