You’d think the first Christmas song Milly ever sang would be something simple like Jingle Bells or even Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but no.  Karen and Phil have an ornament on the small Christmas tree in their sun room that plays I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas that Milly became enamored of over this weekend.  And that’s what she’s been singing.

I was awake around 6:00 this morning.  I have a hard time sleeping in at Amanda’s parents’ house for some reason.  Actually, that reason is probably the dogs, who like to get in and out of bed a lot when we’re there.  Anyway, we decided to go ahead and leave so we could make it to the 11:00 service at church.  Amanda had said something yesterday about going in the afternoon, but I prefer the morning services and we weren’t doing anything in Richlands anyway.  Karen and Phil were going to be gone to their church for a while, so it’s not like there would have been any extra time for visiting.

So we left and drove on to the house to drop off the dogs and get a change of clothes before heading to church.  Milly was upset when we pulled up at the house at first because she wanted to go to Grow Zone.  Milly was in the same room as Lauren Nowak and possibly Rosa Hauser.  Amanda and I sat with Mike and Sarah and some friends of theirs.

When we got home we gave Milly a chance to use the potty before naptime, but it wasn’t happening.  After she’d gone down and Amanda and I watched our customary Sunday Soup, I called Amanda upstairs to listen to Milly, but there was no noise; I was just tricking her to get her to go upstairs.  After that she worked on some presents, so most of our Christmas shopping is done, and I did a little bit of work.

A few days ago Milly and I did the whole “See ya later, alligator.  After a while, crocodile” things while she was going upstairs.  Today she started calling me Alligator and insisted that she be called crocodile.  She wouldn’t answer to her own name.  You know how lately she’ll correct you if you call her anything besides Milly by saying, “No, I Meliamae Dotsey”?  Well today it was, “No, I crocodile.”  Except, that is, for some time at the end of her bath.  At that point she was Mermaid.

There was no potty usage today, but Milly did actually walk down the stairs today.  She was holding my hand with one hand and the railing with the other and did a fine job.

After Milly went down for the night Amanda and I watched a couple episodes of Grimm.  I’m enjoying the show more, but I had trouble staying awake towards the end of both episodes.  That’s no indictment on the show itself.

Zach Dotsey
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