Right now Jacob is incessantly playing UNO. Some combination of our family is involved in playing at least 10 games of UNO daily. Yes. Daily. Sometimes up to 20+ games are played daily. The day starts off at 6:30am with Steve and Jacob playing multiple rounds. Then Natalie gets involved. Occasionally I play a few rounds. Then it turns into rounds between Jacob and Natalie. And if Uncle Norm is here in the morning, then there are at least 3 or 4 more rounds played. Last week was a lucky week- Uncle Jason from New York was here and Tante Mitzi from Oregon was here. Even moooooooore rounds of UNO were played on those days!

And this is what I hear as cards are dealt for each round: “I got 4 lucky cards!!!!” or “I got 2 lucky cards!!!!!” or “Ohhhhhhhh man I didn’t get any lucky cards this time”. Basically if either one of my kids gets dealt a reverse, skip, wild or draw 4, then everyone in the entire household hears the exciting exclamation about how many lucky cards they are now proud possessors of.

The other exclamation which is heard with GRRRRRREEEEEEAT exuberance is the line “YOU DIDN’T SAY UNO!!!!!!!!!” Oh man, watch out! With incredible lightning speed reaction time Jacob will call you out if any micrometer-sized portion of your second-to-last remaining card hits the pile without you having announced “Uno”. He has called people out with great satisfaction knowing he’s delayed their win by causing them to have to draw two additional cards due to their forgetfulness.

Steve and I have learned that Jacob goes through phases in what he’s interested in playing in the game world. It started early on when all he wanted to play night and day was Chutes & Ladders. Then his fixated fascination moved onto Chess. After that was weeks on end of daily hours of Monopoly. And now it’s UNO. There is no dearth of game-playing in this household. Repetitive- yes. At times monotonous- yes. But I like to see it as him keeping with something and acquiring strategies that he tests out and implements over and over and over again to meet with success. The definition of perseverance, right? 🙂