My heroes have always been funny people. It's my dad's fault for playing George Carlin, Tom Lehrer, and Allan Sherman albums when I was in elementary school. I was mesmerized, and a sense of comedic timing quickly became worth two or three other desirable qualities in my book.
So it took me by surprise when I realized that while I'm always hearing about certain developmental milestones ("Is he sleeping through the night/walking/talking/interested in the potty/... yet?"), one seems to have dodged everyone's radar, including mine: Baby's First Joke.
Westley made his first joke last month, while eating lunch. My mom and I were talking to him about the bread on his high-chair tray, and he picked up a piece and rubbed it in his hair. When we said, "Bread on your head?" he grinned, laughed, and did it again. I was pretty sure Westley was making a joke, but I instantly thought Isn't he too young for that?
Turns out, no. Westley is already setting himself up for Class Clown status. He has made the "bread on your head" joke several more times, and he's always delighted when we get it. Tonight, he decided to move away from "verbal" humor, having recently come to share Carlin's fondness for the "bilabial fricative."* This is probably my fault for laughing every time he accidentally blew a raspberry. Now that he knows how to do it intentionally, he's decided to work on his timing.
Rob and I were putting Westley to bed the way we always do, quietly holding him in the doorway of his darkened bedroom. After a minute of relaxed hugging, Westley suddenly popped his head up off Rob's shoulder, let the pacifier drop out of his mouth, and blew a giant raspberry right in my face. Rob and I burst out laughing, trying to contain our response a little bit, so as not to raise the energy in the house from "going to bed" to "goofing off." But Westley seized the moment. He put the paci back in his mouth when I asked him to (while biting my cheeks to keep from cracking up), but quickly let it drop again to blow another raspberry.
Bread on YOUR head, Mommy!
We did finally manage to get him relaxed and in bed, but not without a lot of barely contained laughter. Now that Westley knows has a few data points on being able to make Rob and me laugh, I'm fairly certain he's going to try doing it all the time. I'm thinking that if Westley starts trying to use his joke-cracking to get out of bedtime, I'm going to have to work on my Serious Mom Face. But I'm also thinking that this is the best milestone ever.
*A raspberry is actually a linguolabial trill. This kind of thing usually sets off my Accuracy Meter and makes me itchy, but I stand by George's incorrect use of the phrase. "Bilabial fricative" is much funnier than "linguolabial trill"--and sounds kinda dirty. Comedy gold.
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