Day Thirty-Eight

UNO!

I never knew two syllables could cause so much stress. Say those syllables around Mila and I swear, the kid will cut you. She will dig deep in her pockets, find a rock, sharpen it with her teeth, and cut you. Mila gets so angry when someone says, "Uno!" that I have actually cheated to lose. Forget winning, that's for victims of a 5-year old's violent crime. It's much safer to lose.

But, man, it is HARD to lose a game of Uno against Mila. She has just barely hit the age where she can play the card game competently, in part because she is legitimately such a small kid. She can't hold her cards well, so basically you can count on her to show you exactly what she's got. That means it's REAL easy to know when you should change the color.

But don't play a Draw 4 card.

OMG. If you thought you had seen violence from calling "Uno," you have a real lesson to learn. The Draw 4 is grounds for murder. Legit, I think Mila is going to smother me with a pillow in my sleep and she'll probably shove one of those cards down my throat as a parting gift.

So now that I've explained that Mila is a teensy bit competitive and that Uno makes her feel things, this little story will make sense. Alexis, Mila, and I were playing Uno because apparently we do these sorts of things when we're locked in the house together for over a month. I was winning because of course I was. It's easy to win when one kid keeps showing you her cards and the other one couldn't bluff if her life depended on it. I was winning, but was managing to keep things close enough to keep Mila from losing her temper.

And then it happened. Alexis played the damn reverse card.

That meant that I was no longer in control of protecting Mila's hand. I was down to nothing but three wild cards so, legitimately, the game was mine to win, but I wanted to do it slowly. Patiently. With lots of smiling because Mila needed to feel warm and fuzzy about it. Alexis, though. ALEXIS.

Alexis is just as competitive as Mila. She handles it with a bit more grace, but she is ruthless. That girl will destroy anyone just so she can say that you lost and she won neener neener.

Alexis apparently had all of the "screw your neighbor" cards. She could have played them when they would have ruined my day, but nooooo. She saved them until after the reverse and started destroying Mila. One Draw 2 after another after another and I swear she had them in every color. I kept drawing cards that I didn't need to draw just to keep the pain from falling immediately. but then Alexis would make Mila draw all of the cards. ALL of them.

I finally decided to put the kid out of her misery. I stopped reverse-cheating and began playing to win, so it took four rounds for me to yell the worst two syllables to ever exist in Mila's life, "Uno!"

Mila slammed her cards down, glared at me and then glared at Alexis. She then hissed, literally, because apparently I gave birth to a two-legged cat. She dropped her voice real low and snarled, "You are both dead to me," and then stormed off.

I really hope no future partner ever cheats on Mila or otherwise finds a way to truly wrong her because I don't think I'm going to have enough bail money to get her out.

Comments

[Lisa]

We use the "Little Hands Card Holder". It doesn't solve the small hands problem entirely (especially with Uno), but it does help.