Random funnies and updates

A few recent funny moments from the Willard household:

Today, as we were driving, Zach was quiet in the backseat for a while. I looked back, since this is pretty unusual from our little chatterbox. He was staring out, or perhaps at, the window. A few minutes later, he broke the silence saying "Mama, my head is shaped like a trampoline!"

Yesterday, I overheard Zach singing as he was playing with his cars. My ears perked up when I heard a familiar tune - The Farmer in the Dell. But he was changing the words... the ones I caught were:
- hi ho the derry-o the Chick knocks the King.
- I like Lightning best because he-e's the fastest.

I also heard him providing some loving care to his cars when they crashed. First he'd slam one into the other; one car would then say "ouch ouch" and a third car would come up and kiss it better. :)

Yesterday we took Zach to Target, so he could spend some of the Christmas money he got in advance from G&G Willard. He didn't really get the concept, since Scott often takes him to Target after their weekend breakfast outings, to play some running-through-the-store games and then to look at the toys for a while (yes, we live in Minnesota... this is what we do for entertainment when the weather is less than desirable). Anyway, it took us a while to convince him to pick something out to take home; he ended up with a McDonalds cash register and appropriate plastic food, and a Cars puzzle. So we've been playing McDonalds all day, and as a result, Koskie has been freaked out all day. Apparently the beeping of the buttons is exactly the right pitch to make Koskie very very nervous - shaking, panting, and following me everywhere I go. He didn't even want to eat his breakfast! Poor dog... I think he's going to have to get used to it.

And a few random updates:

Everything is fine with the baby. He's kicking away every day. We got the results of the quad screen back; the levels indicate there's no signs of any chromosomal disorders. Whew. We will have the 20-week ultrasound right around New Year's - and it will be in 2d!

We had Zach's check-up for his leg today. They took another x-ray, and boy was it a delight to have him not cry during this process! Actually, we both commented how nice it was to have Zach running ahead of us down the hall in the hospital, and zoom his cars around on the table in the waiting room, chattering away. A big change from the last few times we were there! Anyway - everything looks great. The leg is completely healed! It's too soon to tell if we need to worry about the length differences... we go back in 3 more months for more x-rays. But we were thrilled to get some good news that confirmed what we suspected was true just from watching Zach in motion.

Zach has also been making some progress with potty-training. Scott has been the driver of this process; with Scott's encouragement Zach has been going to the bathroom on his little potty chair before and/or after his bath, and before bed, for a few weeks. Since Scott had four solid days with Zach over Thanksgiving, he made some real progress - Zach was going on the potty pretty much any time we put him on, and started saying "uh-oh, I'm going potty in my diaper!" I have the feeling this process is going to take a long time, partly because I'm not nearly as active about it as Scott is. But since this boy wasn't the least bit interested and rarely went when we put him on the potty a couple months ago, I'm happy with the progress!

The pictures... Zach decorating our cute but sad little Christmas tree. Since we will be leaving for MT well in advance of the actual holiday, it didn't seem worth it to haul out our big tree. So I dug out the one my parents gave me when I was living in a dorm, and it was the perfect size for Zach to decorate with a few favorite (Sesame Street) ornaments. He put them on, took them off, put them on, took them off. Somehow the little tree survived all of that manhandling!