the ghosts of christmases past

Save for the Christmas that Baxter spent barely a few weeks old, Christmas has always been something that the little kielbasa has spent with us. Though this will be our fourth Christmas together, it seems like only yesterday that we brought him home.

Baxter's first Christmas with us was spent in naked wide eyed wonder. Barely a year old and still getting adjusted to a household that didn't have forty dogs in it, tiny chumley was a quiet, thoughtful delight amidst the hubbub that surrounded him. Watching, as we put up the tree, and wondering, I suppose, how his life was going to unfold. Of all the ornaments Baxter could have chosen to investigate with his puppy curiosity, Baxter chose a flat wooden image of a dachshund head that happened to be hanging on one of the lower branches at the back of the tree. Snitching it as he did ever so gingerly off the tree and giving it a quick investigative nibble, before leaving it on the floor, and leaving me to wonder to this day how he came to find and choose that particular ornament when so many other non doxie ornaments were more readily available.

Little chum's second Christmas just happened to arrive the year that I found a Peter Pan costume just his size on clearance. Oooh, won't tiny chumley be the cutest elf in this?, I thought to myself as I made my purchase. But of course, tiny chumley begged to differ, and thus was born our picture of tiny glumley, glummest elf of glumdonia, Christmas 2008.

By the time the Christmas picture bug hit me last year, I had visions of something a little more gentlemanly for my then three year old boy. I had been itching to do something with the green cotton cable knit sweater I found at goodwill, so why not a holiday dapper dud for this little doxie? Christmas Picture 2009? Much less glum, way more woof, gimme that snackie please!




I can't help but smile when I look at these pictures of Christmas past. Be warmed by the memories each picture brings. Who knows how tiny chumley's christmas picture this year will turn out, but I am certain it will be a fond memory for tomorrow.