Time for Bed: Briarpatch's Beddy-Bye Baby game

Beddy-Bye Baby is a simple progress-along-a-path game for four- to eight-year-olds. Okay, for four- to eight-year-old girls. I know, I know, boys can play with dolls, or at least that's what I've heard, never having witnessed such a thing myself. But I am an expert in little girls, and your little girl, if she has not been completely lost to other products aimed to make little girls into miniature teenagers romanticizing mall visits many years in the future, is going to DIG THIS GAME. How often do I write in all-caps? That is how confident I am.

Look at this picture and tell me your little girl's heart will not melt. Puh-leeze. You know that spot on a dog where if you scratch it, they simply Cannot Resist Kicking Their Hind Leg? Little girls' brains have a spot like that, and Briarpatch has found it.

Of course, Z may be inordinately fond of such topics. I'd estimate she worked pretty much full-time for a year or so mastering the art of picking up a dishtowel/baby blanket/cloth napkin by two corners and delicately spreading it over a doll or stuffed animal like a funeral shroud to "put them night-night." She would do this for hours. For some reason putting things to bed is really the definition of tenderness to her. I guess it's pretty tender to us, too.

The game is simple; roll the colored die to move your pram-bound baby along the path, and land on either what I'll call a "resource" space (bottle/teddy bear/jammies) or a baby space. Either way, you get a card, either for the resource, to hold in your hand, or a baby who is either crying (and wants to eat), sleepy (and needs jammies) or happy (and wants to play with teddy). Yes, we are big supporters of breastfeeding, but you couldn't exactly have a stack of boob cards, could you? Wait a second, could you?

If you have what baby needs when landing on a needy baby space, you give up that card and everything's cool. If you don't, you move back on the board to the last space that offered said item, and end your turn there. Either way, everyone gets these cute cards all the time and stays pretty happy. Z was downright giddy throughout the game because there was an endless supply of two-dimensional babies to attend to.

Eventually you get to a little cul-de-sac that circles around a "Nursery," which you get to put your baby to bed in when you have a significant stockpile of resource cards, presumably to get you through a long night of periodic infant care.

I can't say I find move-along-the-path games to be particularly thrilling, but Z so seriously DUG THIS GAME that it was pretty entertaining just to watch her. The game is currently on sale for $11 from Amazon.com, and lists at $20. With your savings you could go ahead and make some nice boob cards, if you were so inclined.