My daughter takes artsy photographs for your perusal. She has her own Web gallery now. She wanted me to invite you to check out her art. Here is the link.

The cutest thing in the world, at least until the next time I declare the cutest thing in all the world is watching my daughter read her versions of her favorite books on her own. She loves this 4-book Rainbow Fish collection and she has memorized certain key phrases and the way she hears them. So, sometimes she’s in her room reading and she flips through the pages and gives these summary run on sentences of the plot that feature all the key phrases. She likes the way I say, “Give up one of my beautiful, shiny scales? Never!” Always emphasizing the exasperated “Never!”

The daughter and I have been playing some rounds of Candyland in recent weeks. I wish, after all these years, that they had an alternate version to buy for parents not wanting to promote sweets. Something like those Monopoly rebrands. A DelMonte Veggieland sounds fun. How about Granolaland? Cheeseville?

“Oh hell,” I thought, “She already knows what candy is. It’s not like I’m giving her any by playing the game.” I only had to explain the rules to her once and she has known what to do since. She knows to move either one or two color spaces depending on the card drawn. She knows what landing on the licorice does. She takes turns with no problem. Great stuff.

Here’s the thing though: My daughter schools me at Candyland.

Seriously, she completely dominates me at the game. I haven’t been keeping stats of how many games we’ve played so far but my best estimate is it’s somewhere in the twenties. Out of all of those times, I have beat her twice. I am not making this up. My daughter has managed to take a game that all logic and rational thought tells me is completely based on luck and turned it into a crushing exercise in futility for me.

Oh she’ll keep it close in the beginning. Let’s draw daddy into thinking he has a chance and then go for the quick kill. Without fail, she pulls Princess Frostine on me. She hones in on that damn card. I don’t know how she does it. My daughter has some kind of freaky Candyland ESP.

Candyland comes with an information sheet that instructs, for the benefit of younger players, to ignore the possibility of moving backwards when one of the candy square cards is drawn. My daughter says to hell with Hasbro’s namby-pamby kiddie instructions. In the beginning, I thought that we would have to play that way so she wouldn’t get frustrated. No, she has no problem with taking whatever card is coming. She’s been close to the castle before and picked up the Gingerbread guy (close to the start) and she’s happy to do it. I think it’s because she knows it’s not going to matter. I will inevitably land on two different licorice spaces and get a series of single move squares and she’ll still beat me to the castle.

Maybe I should play by the kiddie rules. In all honesty, I really don’t think it would affect the result.

My daughter takes artsy photographs for your perusal.

According to my daughter, Old MacDonald “had to kick a kitty.”

Fortunately, she didn’t demonstrate and was just being silly with words. We shared a long laugh over that one this morning.

I love how kids pick up whole phrases first and figure out how to properly use them later by awkwardly inserting them into conversation. And so goes this snippet from this evening:

Her (from outside the bathroom): Daddy? Are you going to the bathroom?
Me: Yes…
Her: Oh! That’s a good idea!

Well yes, I guess it is one of my better daily ideas versus the otherwise constantly urinating on myself.