who's the bobby fischer of cribbage?

pooka has tried to 'help' me play cribbage against poppa before. it's never worked out very well. today i tried to grab some time with her to go over some fundamentals of the game outside of the actual game setting. i knew poppa was coming over for dinner so i thought we could surprise him a bit.

she has come a long way with her simple addition, so she picked up really quickly on how you earn points. for the first time i actually explained the elements of the game, instead of just having her jump in in the middle. it worked much better this way. i was so proud of the way she assimilated the concepts. i thought it was adorable the way she called a run a 'run-up'. i don't know where she got it from, but i think i'm going to adopt it. she started to see where we earned points without me showing and prompting her.

we played a few open hands and then a closed one, although not in true game order, before she got tired of it and then we switched to candyland. after dinner and a walk for ice cream, we played against poppa. this time we used true game procedure, but we didn't keep score. it was too late to play a full game, i just wanted to let her show off her newfound grasp of the basics. she did pretty well. she took a little longer to add cards up this time, but i know she was tired, plus she wasn't wearing her glasses (she doesn't mind wearing them, but she does try to take them off whenever she can).

i was just so darned proud of her. cribbage at 6.

additionally, her behavior this weekend has been much improved. the 'reset' i was hoping to achieve over the vacation didn't seem like it happened as of tuesday night when i returned, but since then it has kicked in. we are getting along much better and having more fun because of her decreased whining and general crabbiness. i am so thankful i am getting my pooka back. i told her that if the coming week sees her consistent good behavior, she will finally earn that new bike we bought her for Easter. hopefully that incentive, along with our pleasant interactions, will be the right motivation to cement the idea of good behavior in her mind. if not i'm gonna have to find some child-sized shackles.