strategy

we are a game playing family. we also are a fad game playing family -- meaning, we play whatever game liam has deemed the fad for the week, and we play it non-stop. at the height of the summer it was candyland. we then moved on to chutes & ladders. next up was cariboo (a fabulous preschool game, for anyone unfamiliar with this gem.) liam was kind of getting bored with all these, itching for a little more intellectual stimulation, so he found boggle and dragged that out. scrabble followed. those two are really his love, since he's crazy about reading everything and anything. it's fun to see him create words with the letters he has, often reaching over for an extra letter from an opponent to aid his cause. (we follow the game rules rather loosely.) recently, liam discovered uno -- you know, the fancy version of crazy 8's that of course now comes in a dora version, an elmo version, and even a hannah montana version. we are lucky enough to have the plain old 1980's original version, complete with my 5th grade handwriting on a few of the cards with my future married name of mrs. michael j. fox. anyway, uno is the current fad in our house; as soon as he finishes his breakfast, he's asking to play. his hands are not yet big enough to hold seven cards, so we always lay them out on the floor in front of us. visual access to his hand also allows me to keep track of what he has, so i can play a card of mine that will help him out. my ingenious plan was quite successful up until yesterday, when he wised up. i won't bore you with the details of uno round #17 of a rainy afternoon, but suffice it to say that i had two play options: one would cause him to draw two cards and lose a turn; the other gave him a surefire path to victory. because my inner competitive streak stays dormant when playing with my children, i went with the latter. but as soon as i placed down my sacrificial card, liam looked at me as if i were losing my mind. "mommy," he admonished, "that was silly. you should play the yellow Draw-Two!" i thanked him for his sage advice and then corrected my less-than-strategic move, but i began to wonder if my winning was going to backfire and result in a sore loser. however, true to his easy-going personality, he rolled with it. "great job, mommy!" he said. "high five!" and then ... "winner cleans up!" he yelled with a glance behind him, as he scampered off to the playroom. momma didn't raise no dummy.