Loser shuffles.

As you've heard me mention before, boy isn't the best sleeper you've ever met. It takes a lot of work to get him to sleep, and to keep him sleeping throughout the night. It has since day one -- it's just the way he's put together. Most nights after we get him in bed, then, we have to stick close to home (at least, my upper chest does), so it's a pretty standard routine we have of dinner, showers, a DVRd episode of The Office, maybe, and bed, with blogging or bill-paying thrown in when necessary. 

I was expecting the same tonight, but my husband (who always seems to know just how to make me happy -- he has a knack for it) interrupted me at dinner to say, "Hey, after we eat tonight, let's sit on the floor in the living room and play cards."

I paused. And raised my eyebrows. "Wha ... ? Why?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. I guess I figure we stare at computers enough as it is. Let's do something fun."

And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.

So we wrapped up our dinner and headed for the family room. I dug out a couple decks of cards (standard playing cards, plus a deck of Uno cards just in case things got really crazy) and we plopped down to play. 

When two people have a baby, they tend to act like grown-ups most of the time. They work and earn money, they commute to and from offices, they change the baby's diapers and make sure there's plenty of baby food in the pantry. They do things like review their taxes and reorganize the linen closet and give away clothes to goodwill. We'd been doing the grown-up thing for a while now, and just the act of shuffling the cards made me almost giddy with a sense of freedom and liberation. You can't have playing cards around a baby. He'll eat them or tear them or lose one or something. So just breaking them out of the game closet made me feel like I'd boarded a plane to Vegas and was embarking on a weekend of sin and vice. 

I really need to get out more, I know.

Anyway, we got organized and set everything up to play a game called Speed. Most of you have probably played it -- you each start with a stack of cards, and the object is to be the first player to have played all your cards onto the two active piles that are accessible to both players. It's a quick game (duh, it's called SPEED) and you have to be on your toes to play it well. 

Aaaaaaand I slayed him. Over and over. Aaaaaaand it was great. The more rounds we played, the more intense we got, and the more ridiculously gleeful my gloating became when I'd win again. One of the many things I love about my husband is that he lets me gloat when I win (largely because it's rare -- he's a pretty sharp cookie, that man of mine) and I GLOATED. So very much gloating there was, and I did all of it.

We played eight or nine games of Speed and two or three games of Uno before the baby woke up for the first time, and I think he only won once. Maybe he let me win, I don't know. But it turns out that a little heated friendly competition was just what I needed. I had a blast. (Thank you, sweetheart.)

I wonder if I still have that old Connect Four set somewhere.