Card shark

I recently taught the kids a couple of card games, and their favorite so far is War. Sunday evening we sat up on my bed, and they were completely stoked to learn a new game. The funny thing is, although it is a game of completely random chance, based on luck of the draw, and involving no strategic skills whatsoever, for some reason Lucia ALWAYS wins. It is pretty amazing. I figure that this is just another example of how much of a Manning/Blanchard she is. Colin, of course, is a clone of his father, and the Deons are just not a card family. Lucia, meanwhile, pulls Aces out of nowhere, and does the Manning/Blanchard blood running through her proud. Every time she wins, I imagine Grandma and Grandpa looking down on her and beaming with pleasure at my little girl. It is also kind of nice, because Colin is so into board games right now, and being just a bit older, is able to beat her most of the time. But Lucia has found her niche, and I am so looking forward to having her as my euchre partner in a few years.

In a related story, I have had a couple of people look at me in amazement when I shuffle the cards by doing that thing where you cut the deck in half, bend the halves in your hands and then sort of shuffle them together, bend them backwards, and shuffle them together again. 2 of my friends were like, "WOW! Where did you learn to do that?" And I was so puzzled, I thought everyone knew how to do that.

Batman and Barbie

I enjoy playtime with both of my kids. My mentioned previously, Colin is going through a board game stage, and so we play either Sorry or the Goose Game at least once a day. Lucia doesn't really like to play, but she likes to hold the cards and hand them out to the players, effectively controlling the flow of the game, which is consistent with her bossy personality.

Playtime with Lucia is a bit different. She enjoys make-believe, and likes to pretend that she is a princess (her favorites are Ariel and Belle). The downside is that whenever we play, I am basically instructed to follow her around, keep quiet, and not question her decisions. And I never get to be a princess. Her newest make-believe game is Batman and Barbie - guess who has to be Batman every time. I've tried requesting a change in characters - "Can I be a princess?" "No." "Can I at least be a girl?" "No." End of discussion. I try to contribute to the game by suggesting things that we can pretend, "How about we fly to the beach in my Batplane?" "N0." "Barbie, shouldn't we make the dolls some breakfast before we send them to school?" "No." Just do what she says and follow her around as we dance or skip from room to room. That is essentially playtime with my little gir.

Boy Am I Sorry!

My son is crazy about board games. For a while there were only 2 in the house - "Candyland" and "Chutes and Ladders". He loved both of those games, we played them daily. All of the characters from "Chutes and Ladders" were falling apart, the cards from "Candyland" were worn out, and though Colin wanted to continue playing them daily, mom was clearly over them. I do have to say, though, that it was through "Chutes and Ladders" that Colin learned his numbers from 1-100, so there was definitely an upside.

While I was in the U.S. over the summer, I decided that the situation needed to be remedied, and at Aunt Julie's suggestion, decided to buy "Sorry!" to give to Colin as his birthday gift in December. But in the period between July and December, as we played countless "Chutes and Ladders" games, I was endlessly tempted to just break out the game early and end the insanity.

But I made it to his birthday, and he was very excited about his new game, because he had played the "Spiderman" version with his cousin Zane over the summer. In fact, I am happy to say that "Chutes and Ladders" and "Candyland" have been reassigned to the back of the cupboard. He also received another Italian board game for Christmas, "The Goose Game" (don't ask), but "Sorry!" is clearly his favorite. I can't even count the number of times we have played it since the middle of December. Sometimes we even play it more than once a day. On a red-letter day we even get a chance to play with Daddy, making it even more fun. It is a little complex for Lucia, she loses interest quickly, but she likes to hand out the cards to everyone else, and move the pieces. And Colin is really good at it - in the beginning I was taking it easy on him, but now he regularly kicks my butt. The children were supposed to start back on school on Wednesday, but both Wednesday and Thursday were snow days (we got about a foot and a half of snow, which in these parts, is unheard of) and what better way to spend a snow day than playing non-stop games of "Sorry"?

I have already decided that on the next trip to the US we are stocking up on SEVERAL board games. I have already scoped them out on Amazon.com. And I can't believe that I am actually thinking this, but I am sort of starting to miss "Chutes and Ladders".

Christmas photos

Nothing like a little duelling to commemorate the birth of Christ

Christmas photos

Giorgio and Colin taking a break from the non-stop playing

Christmas photos

Lucia and Benedetta playing dress up on Christmas Day with help from Alessandra

Christmas photos

Colin with his remote control helicopter

Christmas photos

Getting ready for Christmas Eve mass

Christmas photos

Lucia with her new sing along microphone (includes disco ball and lights!)

Happy New Year!

Here's wishing all our friends and family a wonderful, peaceful new year. We had a very nice little party at our house, with our friends Shanda, Marco and their son Noah (4 years), who are back in Italy visiting for the holidays, and Kathy, Nico and little Emanuele (10 months).

It is, needless to say, a bit of pressure having a professional chef over for dinner (Kathy attended the Culinary Institute of America), but she brought a wonderful roast turkey breast, Shanda brought a delicious dessert, and I prepared Artichoke Bruschetta for a starter, and then a Mushroom and Farro Torte for a main vegetarian dish, Creamy Baked Spicy Polenta (seriously yummy) for a side dish as well as a little salad. Then I made sure that I served dinner late and made plenty of drinks available in the meanwhile, so that by the time they ate, they were all drunk and starving, so nobody complained about the food!

We had entertainment from the kids as well. Shanda is a dancer, and Noah has inherited his mom's talent. That kid has some really good moves, and since Lucia, of course, loves dancing (especially flipping her hair around), they were a happy pair.

Emanuele made it an early night, his first New Year's Eve was apparently not enticing enough to keep him awake, but the other three all made it to midnight, just barely. Colin and Lucia were in bed by 12:30pm, completely exhausted, but Colin was thrilled that this was the latest he had ever stayed up in his life. When I told him that his Grandma had said that his 5 Lamaze cousins were all in bed by 8:30pm, he was so psyched that he had been allowed to stay up later, and maybe, for just a few minutes, Marco and I were cool parents.