Christmas is coming

One thing I'm not thankful for... whatever instinct dogs have that causes them to roll in things that stink. Teri and I took Koskie for a walk on Thanksgiving (despite a crazy cold wind), and right before we made it safely home, Koskie found a yellowish putrid substance to happily thrash his body around on. Hopefully giving our dog a bath isn't a new Willard family Thanksgiving tradition.

Two other funny stories from the last week:
Thanksgiving night Teri had finished giving Zach her special super-long fun bath, and we could hear them happily playing up in Zach's room. Since it was a decent amount of time past his bedtime, I decided to play the bad guy and go up and hurry bedtime along. When I walked in and asked Zach if he was ready for night-night, he responded with "mama, go downstairs," and he actually waved me away! He clearly has figured out who is more likely to give him his way, and it isn't mean 'ol mom.

I know I won't be able to do the other story justice; I think a video camera would be required for that. But try to picture it... Bubba Gump includes jello with their kids' meals - something.Zach had never had before. He made quite the mess as he caused it to wiggle and jiggle, and he was giggling as hard as his stained-blue lips would allow. :)

Today was Christmas-decorating day. We put the tree up and some of the decorations around the house while Zach was napping, so when he got up he was pretty amazed at all the santas around the house. He kept saying - Daddy, look at that Santa! We tried to get him to participate in the tree-decorating, but I think that lasted for about three ornaments. We didn't put up a tree last year, since we weren't home much and were concerned about what a new walker would do with a lighted tree. This year will be interesting. So far he's pulled his dinosaur ornament (a gift to him from the Nowaks last year) off the tree about four times...