The Funny Show.

{G playing a song on a pretend vacuum while

holding a stick horse and wearing my sunglasses with a racing helmet}

I find it important to incite laughter in my home. Some may argue that one is either born funny or not but I firmly believe that instilling a little silliness in my children can't be a bad thing. They have big shoes to fill with my dad being a clown and I don't mean to brag, but I did win the wittiest of my graduating class in 1993 (my second proudest moment to date). So, we play games to encourage laughter as much as possible.

We warm up with an old fashioned staring contest, the kind where whoever laughs first loses. I admit that I have an unfair advantage because I was the master of this game in Elementary school, taking down kid after kid on my bus with my nonsensical skills. The rules are that you can't talk but you can act as ridiculous as you want. All sorts of funny faces pass between G and I as we both try to hold back the laughter. K usually ends up giggling first because he's too young to know the rules. We give him a free pass as G shoves a finger up his own nose and shakes his hips in hopes of breaking me.

After a few rounds of the staring contest, we move on to "The Funny Show". We take turns getting dressed up and performing skits for one another. I usually go first as I slap a pirate hat on my head, grab a whisk in one hand, a pretend sword in the other, and then stumble around the living room talking like a pirate that just inhaled helium from a balloon. "Aye, whose got the scurvy? I'll whip em' up some eggs and rub it in their noses!" I'll shout while stomping around the room. The peanut gallery falls into a pile of giggles as I get more and more exaggerated with my movements. G yells "You are so funny Mom!" and he actually means it. It warms my attention seeking heart every time.

G is up next and he usually mimics what I just performed but might put on a knight's helmet instead, I laugh and slap my knee and then demand that he comes up with his own idea. A few moment later, he is before me pretending to smack himself in the head with a maraca while wearing a Ninja Turtle mask and jumping on one foot. He'll make up a song about the eyeball fiesta. K and I laugh uproariously and G looks so proud. Then it's my turn again but this time I am silly old lady in a fireman's hat and I walk around with my butt sticking out with a shovel in my hand. All while screaming about the high price of bunion cream. We perform one crazy skit after another until our stomachs hurt from laughing. It is so flippin' fun.

Usually K is just a willing audience member but the other day, after we had performed our last skit, he ran over and grabbed the whisk. He then yelled "Boowoohaahaahoo" at the whisk and started spinning in circles. He had a sparkle in his eye as he threw the whisk across the room, grabbed the pretend sword, and beat the crap out of a toy truck while jumping up and down and yelling "doy" over and over. K had his first performance in the funny show and what a premier it was. We all laughed so hard that I almost tinkled a little.

I'm so proud of my future class clowns!