Laughter

As you can imagine, the stress levels in my house right now are quite high. And when stress levels are high, laughter levels are quite low. I'm not saying that things are gloom and doom at home, but there just hasn't been that much to laugh at lately. If laughter levels ever dip to historic lows in your own household, I have the perfect solution... babysit a 4 year old for a week.

We put my nephew to bed last night and everything was very quiet as we were watching tv on the couch. We were watching Friends on TBS. It's probably my favorite show, and I always laugh out loud when watching it. During one outburst, my wife looked over at me and said that our apartment had been full of laughter over the past several days, and she was absolutely right. It has. My nephew is a funny little guy.

We have a nice routine going on now with him. When I get home, we have several things that we must do. In no particular order, we have to water the flowers and tomato plant on the porch (he laughs when he spills the water), feed the fish (he laughs when the fish start gobbling up food), help with supper (he laughs when we tell him he's doing a good job), eat supper, take a bath (he LOVES taking a bath and laughs when water splashes), put on pajamas, say prayers, and go to bed. He also has a workbook with numbers and letters and all sorts of other neat stuff. He likes to sit in my lap and go through the book. So I say again, he laughs all the time! And it's the kind of laughter that when you hear it, it makes you want to laugh, too.

Last night he was coloring with an orange marker and he was getting it all over his hands, and he dropped it twice onto my white t-shirt. So when he wasn't looking, I grabbed it from him and hid it. I didn't want a bigger mess. He looked up at me with a confused look on his face wanting to know where his marker went. I said that I hid it. A whole new game had just been created. He had to find the marker. I put it on the floor behind the chair. When he found it, he laughed like crazy. He wanted me to hide it again. And again. And again. I taught him the meaning of "you're getting cold... colder.... you're freezing!" and "you're getting warm... warmer... you're hot!" We played this hide the marker game for probably 30 minutes, and every time he found it he'd cackle with loud laughing.

I can't wait to be a dad.