Laughter, The Best Medicine

This was always one of my favorite columns in Reader's Digest, and I believe the principle is true. Nothing lifts the spirits like a good laugh. My niece Rachel and I spent almost our whole childhood keeping each other in stitches! Anyone who watched us grow up could attest to this fact. We were The Laughers, and even had a "theme song" jingle. If you haven't seen Mary Poppins lately, rewatch it and pay special attention to the tea-party-on-the-ceiling scene. Rachel and I used to laugh that much, maybe more.

I've enjoyed exploring what makes Noah laugh and hearing the childish giggle. It's infectious and lightens whatever load we happen to be bearing. Tonight Noah fell and hit his tooth, and his gums started bleeding. My quick fix for this is to wrap an ice cube in a washcloth and let him suck on it. The cold helps the pain and bleeding to subside, and the novelty of an ice cube distracts him for a while. So after his fall, we were on the couch enjoying his ice cube. I was making slurping sound effects whenever he would suck on it, and he would put it in my mouth and I'd do it again. Here's a video of the giggles we caught. Pardon the darkness and probably the quality too. (I've figured out that the video quality goes to pot in the process of loading it onto my blog. Oh well.)

There's nothing like a good laugh!