Candy Land, Shmandy Land

While I was working on the computer yesterday, Alice found our Candy Land game. 


"We pay dis!!"

Cool! I LOVE this game! It'll be super easy to play! It even says 3+ on the box. She's 3+! Heck, she's mostly 4!!

We set the game up, I explain the rules, and then I tell her to pick a game piece. 

This is foolishness on my part because it doesn't matter what color she chooses, before the end of the game she will have switched pieces with whoever is closest to the finish line or whoever gets a picture card. 

"But dats MY paborite!!" pouty face, blinky eyes...

I attempted to explain the rules and I tried to stress that it doesn't really matter which game piece you have and switching isn't really an option because losing isn't the end of the world. But then I gave up because explaining the merits of following the rules is a complete and utter waste of breath. And it was way too early for wine. 

Now to the cards. To play the game, you draw cards that have colors that match the path on the game. Easy enough! Only Alice can't pick up one card at a time and she must be a budding poker player because she'll flip a card, immediately say "not dis one" and trade it for different one.

The only cards she wants are the ones with pictures on it. I removed them from the deck during one game because I thought it might help her from being distracted. Nope. She just flipped over all the cards and said, "hey!! where's mine peanut card!" Yeesh. The peanut card isn't even the one closest to King Kandy's Castle!! 

So now we have to make sure the peanut card is on top so we can just go ahead and get that card out of the way.  

(And I know what you're thinking - I'm enabling her. Nope. This is just survival, people! We're down to the last few days of summer and I can finally see the very dim light at the end of the tunnel. My job between now and August 30th is to survive. Just. Survive. By any means necessary. Let her have the stupid peanut card - it won't kill anyone.)

I think we managed to play the game correctly once. Since then it has been whatever rules she has in her head. 

This morning it deteriorated quickly and all she wanted me to do was "caulk" (talk) for the game pieces. I had to be the Mommy and Daddy pieces and she talked for the kid pieces. Fine. So I attempted to work in some life lessons like stranger danger and what to do when you get lost but that's not what the kid pieces wanted to talk about. 

This led to the parent pieces becoming frustrated and heading off to the Adults Only Licorice Lagoon while the kids got shipped off to Nana Nutt's House. 

Which was not apparently in her plans. 

We (the parental game pieces and myself) were instructed to go "rest in da syade" only she assumes we know where that is and instead of just telling us, she keeps letting us know we're wrong.

"BUT WE DON'T KNOW WHERE THE SHADE IS!!" I say.

"Ahright, caln down, caln down. I show you." she says.

And it's probably still too early for wine. 

Until next time......