Playing Games with Mikaela

Mikaela’s been on a bit of a Candyland binge lately. She really loves playing, and she seems to have gotten past her earlier penchant for cheating (skipping squares so that she moves ahead faster, burying cards that she draws that she doesn’t like) and throwing tantrums when she loses. Yay, maturity! But playing Candyland with Mikaela, one still has to get used to some unique quirks. Most significant among them is that Mikaela has re-named the cards. Instead of referring to them by the colors on the squares, she insists that the cards be called by the new names she’s given them. Some are relatively logical – red cards are called “rose” and yellow cards are called “gold.” Some are a bit of a stretch – green cards are “turquoise.” And some are just bizarre – orange cards are “gum” and blue cards are “oak tree.”

Once you get past the card-renaming confusion, she’s fun to play with. She doesn’t like anyone to feel badly when they lose. So she insists that whoever finishes first and wins has to dig out the “Candy Hearts” card from the deck. That card is then used as a magic carpet to fly the losing token to the gingerbread house at the finish (and there to join the winning token chowing down on the treats in the gingerbread house).

So the picture really has nothing to do with this post, but it’s a cute shot of Mikaela on the balance beam at gymnastics and I wanted to highlight it.