When Jessica was little, she and I played a LOT of games. We always enjoyed games, but when she was four, she started playing games that I liked too. We played a lot of Yahtzee. That girl knew her multiplication facts up to the sixes when she was only four due to playing Yahtzee. I also taught her how to play Rummy around that age, along with various other games. Since I was a single mom, she was my only companion, and we played a lot of games and had a lot of fun. Around the time she turned 8 or so, she sorta didn’t want to play with me as much. I could get her for an occassional game of Rummy or something on a boring Sat afternoon, but that was about it. Flash forward. When Allison was around 3 or 4, I started introducing games to her as well. She loved games, we had a great time. UNTIL….Meredith became mobile. I used to refer to Meredith as the stealth bomber, because she was silent and destroyed everything in her path. Including games in progress. It was then that I stopped playing games with my children. By the time Meredith was old enough to enjoy games, I was hugely pregnant and uncomfortable wtih baby Lydia, and then after she was born I had a baby, a preschooler, a young child, a rebellious teenager, and a thriving business.
Now here we are, Lydia is 2 years old, and I, ambitiously I admit, thought maybe Allison, Meredith and I could play a game. I figured Lydia could help me and it would be fun. We pulled out the Monopoly Jr. game and got it all set up. As soon as we set it up, Lydia finds her own die and her own car and proclaims that it is Lydia’s turn. Hm…not gonna sit happily in my lap holding my money I see. She then proceeds to sort her own money, back into the bank, or to give it to her sisters. When she does get a turn (see, I tried to include her), she would plomp plomp plomp her car all over the board, ignoring me when I told her to put it HERE…no HERE…then give your sister $2. During many of her turns, she would be up and dancing, then when it was someone elses turn, she would loudly proclaim it to be “Lydia’s turn,” grab the die and run with it. Fine we deal……Then, as soon as we get a few houses on the board, you know..the point in monopoly where you start worrying about someone jiggling the board and all the houses flying…it was THEN that the dog starts his first of many failed attempts to walk over the playing board. He eventually settles on taking a nap on top of the bank, so that each time we needed to make change, or passed go, we had to sneak a hand under the dog to grab some paper money, and hope that we pulled out the right change. I knew that the ones were somewhere around his left hip. But the girls did find it enormously funny when I declared that Diesel just wanted to be the banker. After about 45 mins, and 30 mins after bedtime I proclaimed the game to be over. We counted our money and put it away.
The one thing that saved the whole experience is that I won. In fact, I kicked major monopoly jr. butt.
So maybe we will try again in another year.
lol
Maybe next year…
LOL. Sounds AWFULLY familiar…except I never had the luxury you did with Jess. Someday…
G
I always loved games too, and made a habit of getting games as birthday gifts for my kids, until my last child came along. She is just a whirling tornado of destruction, and has been known to frantically wreck everything she can reach while you’re desperately trying to clean up her last wreck. After 3 Cootie legs were flushed down the toilet, the Chutes And Ladders spinner was dismantled and cut up with “safety” scissors, and every deck of cards in the house had at least one joker with the words “Jack of Spades” written in permanent marker, we got rid of all the kids games and put the rest WAY on top of the bookshelf. *Sigh* Those commercials about Family Game Night are very misleading.
Emma likes to “play” games a lot, but they always end up like your Monopoly game. I love playing games so I can’t wait until she can play for real.