magic baby laughter

Ezra loves it when I sing Itsy-Bitsy Spider. I do it with the hand motions I saw my sister do when she sang it to her daughter. Whenever Ezra hears the song, he smiles a huge smile, which is further magnified when he sees my hands moving up, finger-thumb, finger-thumb. He has ever since I first did it when he was just a couple of months old.

Recently, he's started giggling when he gets tickled on his rib cage or back. Ezra laughing is like a drug for me and Dave. We keep doing whatever makes him laugh, but inevitably, the joke gets less funny to Ezra each time we do it. We keep going but eventually he just smiles silently at the joke so we stop. Sometimes I don't even know what makes him laugh; it's like he just has a funny thought. Like when we're trying to walk or rock him to sleep, often he starts giggling as he looks up at my or Dave's face. I can only imagine what he's thinking, probably something like, "man, they just keep walking... they think I'm really gonna fall asleep... ha ha ha."

The other day I figured out that I could combine Ezra's loves by tickling him after the rain comes down and washes the spider out. He loved it. He made great big belly laughs every time every time I did it, even starting to giggle just when my hands got to the top of the water spout, even before the rain came out. His giggles petered out a bit so I stopped.

Last night, I started singing Itsy-Bitsy Spider to Ezra and he started giggling again when my hands got to the top of the spout. Ahhh. I'm such a junkie. When he laughed, my irritation at Dave having to work late, my exhaustion, my stiffness, it all just melted away; a lot like taking a couple of tylenol 3s after a surgery I had years ago.

I was still getting my fix, although Ezra was winding down, when Dave walked in after a very long day. When Ezra saw him, he got a huge case of the wiggles and a great big sunny smile. Although he'd seemed perfectly happy, it was clear to me then that he had really missed his daddy for those few late hours. Magic.