Thinking about laughter

Today, we each had a turn watching Grace by ourselves. We all seemed to enjoy it quite a bit!

It struck me again — not that I’ve gone on about it here — that my favorite sound is her laughter. Grace has a fantastic giggle. Cy got back home before she went down to her grandparents’ to spend the night, so he got his good-night kiss and hug before she left. It quickly escalated to knock-me-over hugs (video forthcoming) and kiss-attacks, both of which invariably cause a bout of giggles. It was almost as much fun to be a bystander!

Later, on our way to eat, we started talking about her developing sense of humor. I was noticing the resurgence of the knock-me-over hug, and remembering back to the first pun she understood:

We were upstairs in Cy’s office, long before it became as messy as it is now. I was sitting on the rug (wait for it!), and she was handing out knock-me-over hugs galore. I told her to wait a moment, and grabbed the rug, and told her to give me another knock-me-over hug. She did, but I held onto the rug, and pointed out that it wasn’t a knock-me-over hug, it was a knock-me-over rug. I was rewarded with a fresh bout of giggles!

This was at about 18 months. (That’s a year and a half to you and me.) Before that, even, there was another event we love to remember:

We were watching some news channel. It doesn’t matter which one, but it wasn’t named after an animal. There was a doctor speaking on screen. He was wearing surgical scrubs, the full get-up, including the hairnet. The scrubs were of a uniform color, but the hairnet portion was mostly white with drawings on it. Grace watched until he came on the screen, then piped up,

“He’s wearing big girl panties on his head!”

It goes back to her first joke: she would take anything — paper, food, toys, anything — and put it on her head, telling us “Hat!” Sometimes, we still get that one!