What Do You Call a Baby Card Shark?

This past summer one of the fun memories was watching Grandaddy's renewed love of solitaire as he played on the deck. He's quite terrible at it, actually. In his defense, I think it's because he keeps trying to play when he knows the kids have some of his cards.

Sammie wanted to do what he was doing, so he tried to teach her.  It was a little complicated to pick up, so she taught him to play Go Fish instead, which he called "Goldfish" until I wrote it on a piece of paper for him.  (Then the little pond in the middle started to make sense.) 

When we went to Arkansas this Fall, one of the things he insisted on bringing back was a red lapboard he'd made for Grandmother, so she didn't have to leave the couch to play. I can't even picture her without this red board on her lap.  

It's not red anymore, because when he brought it home he tried to trim it (with a hacksaw) to fit his chair.  Between the Elmer's, Gorilla glue and clamps, he still couldn't keep the red felt on it, so that part's been crumpled up beside his chair for a couple of weeks now.

He's started to teach Chase and Ava the face cards.  It's funny to hear this kind of conversation from the other room:

Granddady:  You comin' up, baby?

Ava:  Yes.  (With a little lisp.)

Grandaddy:  Well, then, come on.  (Which sounds a little more like "own" than "on.")

Ava:  Play cards? (Said as she's nodding her head up and down and sounding a little more like "ca-oods.")

Grandaddy:  You wanna play cards?  Well, ok, we'll play cards.  What's this one? (He always starts with a queen.)

Ava: QUEEEEN!

Grandaddy:  Right!

And off they go, practicing the face cards.  Her favorite is always the queen, but she's picking up on the others. Chase loves to play, too and will bring all kinds of weird cards....Noah's ark match game or his deck of amphibious animals.  Still, he plays for as long as they want to and always hates when they move on to the next thing.

So what do you think is sweeter, the gold tooth, the big belly or how content they both seem with a handful of cards?