Real smiles

I got a few pictures of Zach with a genuine smile on his face, so I thought I'd share a few. He was doing some painting, and you can see pretty easily what brought about the laughs.

This is how the painting started:

And this is how it ended:

This boy makes us laugh pretty regularly these days, usually when we hear our own words coming out of his mouth. Today Zach completely cracked me up when he was "helping" Scott figure out why our upstairs hall ceiling lights weren't working. I don't know exactly what Scott had done, but I do know they hadn't been up there long when I heard Zach say "Wow, you're really good at that Daddy!" Always nice to get a little encouragement from your two year old.

And my own personal favorite was when Zach parroted me, not only with the words, but also the tone. When Zach is doing something he shouldn't, I have the habit of saying "Zach, please don't play with the blinds. Thank you!" I get the "thank you" in there quickly, in a very chipper voice; perhaps I'm under the illusion he'll think he's doing me a favor rather than following an order...? Anyway, the other day I told him we needed to change his diaper. This is rarely his favorite activity, so Zach put a chair between us and said "I don't need to change my diaper. Thank you!" Literally the exact same chipper tone; I guess I'm not fooling anyone!