What's Tickling Avery's Funny Bone?

What the HELL is Avery laughing at?
That’s the question gnawing at me because so many of the photos of the lad look as if he’s laughing his butt off, even while sleeping. What’s so FUNNY, to a 7-week-old who doesn’t have much to remember to laugh about, unless it’s the days not so long ago when he lived in a one-womb apartment and he could kick his mom mischievously at random to wake her up or if he didn’t like whatever she had for lunch?
Can’t be sugar plums dancing in his head, because he’s never even SEEN sugar plums.
Could it be he’s dreaming of becoming like hometown Minnesota hero Joe Mauer some day, making a bazillion dollars and becoming the American League’s MVP? Not likely, plus, by the time he’s Mauer’s age, the Twins probably will have abandoned their new outdoor stadium, which opened just a few weeks ago. Already, Avery’s older than the aging stadium, and you know how sports franchises abandon and/or implode stadiums with abandon.
Maybe it’s the fact that he finally got to meet ME? Also highly unlikely, as that would be more likely to scare the crap out of him. (Not that he needs any trouble evacuating, so to speak, from what I hear. Thank goodness, I haven’t witnessed any of his diplosions.)
Oh, well, I’ll have to be satisfied with the fact that it’s just another of life’s mysteries, like why anybody would want to bungee jump, f’rinstance.
Maybe he’s just happy about meeting new people, especially cousins, which he did in glorious faction during the boys’ recent trip to see snow (the Florida four, unfortunately, were frustrated in not being able to fulfill that goal) and a foray to California, where he met his only female cousin.


Avery's mom, Erica, introduces him to cousin Amelia.














Amelia's parents,
Kevin and Annie, get some
face time with the cousins.

On Easter morn, the moms and kids connect.


At the airport, Avery gives a Minnesota Nice welcome to the Florida cousins, who came in search of snow. Although Patrick appears to have jet lag, the others are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed: Jack, Luke and Vincent.

Boys night out in Minnesota.


Soooooooo, plenty of stuff to smile about, meeting all these cousins. Wears a guy out so much he needs a nap. After all, despite the Easter Bunny hat, he's not the Energizer Bunny:

Of course, this just gets us back to the beginning: What the HELL is Avery smiling about, even in his sleep? Maybe he IS dreaming of sugar plums, although that's a Christmas deal, not Easter.

Oh, WAIT! I know! He’s got gas. Laughing gas — sure. Why didn’t I think of that before? It's natural. Gas. (Not that it runs in the family.)

Kerfuffle Is in the Eye of the Beholder

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, or so they say.
Of course, like most sayings from the ubiquitously anonymous “they,” that doesn’t always get to the core of the truth. Take pictures (pun intended, unapologetically), f’rinstance. Especially when a photo causes a family kerfuffle.
Not a huge kerfuffle, mind you — more like a kerfuf.
The dispute is over time: I contend that my son, Brendan, was 6 months old for this particular photo shoot, because I distinctly remember that he couldn’t hold up his head. So the photographer put the softball under his chin, propped up his head for a split second, shot the photo, and caught his head before it flopped over, his neck broke and his noggin rolled across the floor.
Brendan doesn’t remember, for obvious reasons. His older sister, Annie, doesn’t remember, either, but she probably would disagree with me just to be contrary. His younger sister, Allison, wasn’t even on the scene, obviously, so she doesn’t get a vote.
His mom, Susan, contends it was more like a couple of weeks, perhaps 6. I suppose that fits the floppiness of the neck angle, but as I recall, it was 6 months: That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I have no idea how to track down the photographer, who very well might be dead, for all I know.
What I DO know for sure is that it’s my favorite photo of the lad, to this day. That’s why I carry it in my billfold.
I’ll let you be the judge:


So, does that look like 6 months or 6 weeks? Oh, WHATEVER.
Comes now Brendan, with his own offspring. He and/or Erica — I don’t want to start a family kerfuffle, so I won’t try to nail down which of the copious shutterbugs wielded the camera — shot a photo of their Avery that is reminiscent of the softball bob.
Sans softball, of course:


The time isn’t in dispute because even now, Avery is only 6 weeks old, and this was shot when he was just a few weeks, if that.
The thing I do know is that they bear a striking resemblance to each other. I always have trouble seeing family resemblances twixt kids and their parents, so if I can see the likeness here, it must be obvious.
OR, if I can see the likeness, perhaps it proves that I’m right about the 6 months, too.
At any rate, even if anybody still questions my math, the photos prove that the apple doesn’t fall from the tree, in looks.
Or DO they? What if we toss in another photo in our quest for a trifecta. I don’t think this little lad, in a photo shot when he was older than a year, but younger than 2 as near as I can figure, looks like either Brendan OR Avery.

So who might he be? Perhaps a poor, redheaded stepchild from the era of black and white photos. I bet he’s grayed a bit over the decades, so he’d be as hard to track down as the softball photographer.
And so another angle appears in the family kerfuf.

Also in the hopper, for coming weeks, are photos of Avery's auspicious meeting with a handful of his cousins, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, when they ventured from the flatlands of Florida to the hills of Minnesota, in a quest for snow.