The girls have entered this hyper competitive stage lately. Everything is a race. Everything is a contest. Everything is for a score or a ranking or some other way of determining the winner.
On one hand, I love it. Racing to go upstairs and get ready for bed, or to finish dinner, or to clean up, is a win/win situation for me. They get to be crazy and competitive, and I get them to complete their tasks without dragging their feet and piling on the excuses.
On the other hand, when there's a winner, there's a loser. Not everything ends in a tie, and despite the lessons on being gracious in both victory and defeat, there are usually tears and gloating. How many tears or how much gloating is usually tied to how tired they are, how hungry they are, or how desirable the outcome for the winner is, but regardless, tears and gloating aren't great.
So now I'm trying to channel the spirit of competition into other avenues. It's not worth the rush to bed if we're going to be crying and fighting when we get there. Best to find a better place for it.
Enter games. We love games. Reagan is finally starting to move beyond the toddler favorites of Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders, and all of us can play board games together.
Madison has a new appreciation for card games, which is so much fun for us. She's loving Go Fish and Crazy 8s, and we're moving on to Uno and War. I love how easy those are to carry with us.
And speaking of taking games on the road, we're also enjoying those classic road trip games. They aren't quite ready for a true license plate game - especially since we're usually driving around in state - but they're loving I Spy, and, even more than that, the car scavenger hunt. Like everyone seems to do, we have our own family twist on the rules, and it can keep them happy and occupied for what feels like ages.
Even better? It seems like since this game is in a perpetually unfinished states, there's no worries about winners and losers...yet.
