Card Sharks

After Grandpa Tom and Lynn said goodbye on Sunday evening, we had a little bit of time before the bambini's need to get in the bath.  So, we taught them how to play War, the card game.  We played just until we ran out of cards in our draw-from piles, to which we'd not added the cards we took, rather than until someone had all of the cards.  That seemed prudent with bath time looming, and also before we began and didn't know how it would all go.  We needn't have worried about this last.  The bambini took right to the game, very quickly remembering the king-queen-jack hierarchy (aces were low).  We do a lot of counting--counting as we deal, counting the number of cards in our piles at the end (Birdie likes to scatter hers all around her as she counts).  It took Julie right back to the summers she spent with her grandparents in Texas.  They played cards with her every night and she had to keep score.  She came to realize over time that she'd been hornswoggled into practicing addition, but in the beginning, she thought she was hot stuff to be entrusted with the score pad, and was happy just to play.  That's about where the bambini were at Sunday night and tonight when we played again while Ted finished making dinner.