[I actually wrote this to a brother on a mission but this is world-broadcastable, slightly revised and expanded.]
Mago laughs at me—and naturally I should enjoy this—when I am silly with him on purpose. (No. He doesn’t laugh on purpose. He’s far too genuine to need courtesy laughs.* I’ll teach him false laughter on his 7th birthday, in preparation for his 8th, when such awful sins may become part of his repertoire. He’s going to do it anyway. I may as well give him a head-start. We’ll have a Family Home Evening lesson on it. Anyway, I’m silly on purpose). This is what a child does to people. Some things that continue to make him laugh are any nonsense word said in some unexpected or emphatic way, or a sudden gesture, or anything. We took him to fly a kite and Tia ran with the kite in vain in dead wind while it didn’t go anywhere, and he laughed and said “Mommy funny.” One morning Tia opened the garage door so I could drive out, and I was holding him in front of it and raised my arm and said “OPEN SESAME.” He laughed and said “Daddy funny.” He tells us this often.
He loves playing peek-a-boo/chase/monster in circles around the recliner chair in his room before bed.
He recently first confessed - no, not sins! He’s too young! But I will make sure he confesses when he starts using false laughter - he confessed and used the word “love” as to a little neighbor girl. He said “love” - then her name. This is a girl several years older who adores him (and is very sweet to him) and they play. He frequently requests to visit her and Tia obliges. He has since confessed the same for us.
Yesterday he kept laughing very hard when I imitated the sound of a bird in our backyard - a high sqeaking/squaking “Phichiieeeew!” - and he took this up as a word for the bird, which he insisted I keep taking him on short journeys to search for.
Today Tia was making a hippopotomus puppet request items of food (actually pieces of a wood puzzle of foods) in a low voice, chew them for a bit when Mago handed them into the puppet’s mouth, then spit them out emphatically (phhhht!), which he was very amused with.
There’s a neighbor boy he sometimes plays with, a few years older, who has his same first real name (Mago is our son’s alias here on the web). Tia refers to our son as Mago when they play to avoid confusion - and now somehow they’ve both ended up calling the other Mago and niether using their real name when they are together. Go figure. Today behind curtains in the church foyer they were wrestling and hugging and occasionally Mago would bonk and cry, then get over it and go back to it.
*No, actually he does sometimes courtesy laugh - he did so when he saw this and this movie of me.. no the second was a real laugh - incidentally watching them when I put them up at that new film blog.