Had Family Game night tonight (just like every first Saturday of the month). It was at my folk's place. Three games of pinochle - 1 three handed and 2 double-deck 4 player. I was winning the three handed at break and then my dad snuck up and stole the game from me by 4 measly points! We play 4 handed boys on girls (i.e. Mom and I vs Dad and F.) Girls won both. Fairly unusual and this comment my dad made today shows why: "You know, F, we have the better strategy and are the better players, but you can't be luck. And they always have luck." My mother and I generally have the higher meld amounts, though my father has had the most in our group ever (got a double run once).

My niece, L, is 17 months old and is turning into a complete ham. I had so much fun with her, but boy is she exhausting. She is a climber and also was getting into everything. F finally put a baby gate up to keep her out of the dining room/study and as he was doing so, she got this look on her face like, "NO! Don't lock me out of there." She's finally learned to say 'one'. She used to say 'two' whenever someone else said 'one'. And when F would count from one to ten, she could be counted on to fill in 2, 5, and 9 in the right spots. Today she kept saying one. She walked down the stairs to a cadence of one, one, one, one, one. She held the railing carefully until she was on the second step and then looked at the railing, shook her head and took her hand off the railing. Landed one the first step kind of wobbly so she had to quickly move the floor. Hit it slightly off balance and pitched forward. I didn't laugh too hard at her, but she clearly made the decision to not hold the handrail. My dad her doh-re-mi. She sang it as doh-ree-mi-ba-ba-doh. Her vocabulary is actually fairly extensive and she understands antonyms quite well. inside/outside, down/up, no/yes, open/close, grass/cement (okay that one's not really an antonym, but she's allowed to run in the grass but not on the cement and understands that), hot/cold, mine/yours. In the above list she has a hard time saying cement, grass and yours (comes out yu-oooooo), but says the others fine. (This is about a third of the words that she says that I recognize. She understands far more than she says though.

Friends Game night is tomorrow, so should be a good day.