Comedy

::of illnesses
It has been a summer of sickness. Really, it's nearly laughable. If it's not a stomach bug, it's the flu. If it's not the flu, it's a miserable cold that holds on for dear life, making you feel perfectly wretched for over a week. And if it's not that, it is seasonal allergies. And yet again, if it's none of those, don't you worry. It's pink eye. And then, once treated, the pink eye mysteriously returns. I just don't get it. Sometimes I think I need some serious OCD hand washing skills and a live-in motivational speaker to help me through tough seasons such as this.

::of errors
My husband is a funny guy. In fact, we have a running feud in our marriage regarding humor. We didn't always think the other person was funny, but now we see eye-to-eye on what's humorous and what's not. Well, mostly. My husband has what I call a "deep dark secret" regarding comedy. Here goes: He loves to watch America's Funniest Home Videos. (She blushes in embarrassment.) I just don't get it. It's not funny to me.

Well, fortunately for Matt, who has been feeling a little lonely watching the show all by himself, he's found a fellow fan. Karis loves to watch the show with him, all the while proclaiming over and over, "Fall down!" And it really is a valid point on her part. Every video does in fact include someone or something falling down. And that's just not funny to me. But, when all is said and done, I guess we all have our little guilty t.v. pleasures, like...maybe...perhaps...for instance...teenage princess movies starring Anne Hathaway. (Ahem)

::of lament
Karis has taken to singing songs about her life. I used to do the same thing when I was a little girl, much to my brother's chagrin. He loves to remind me how much "little Alina" annoyed him growing up. I remember singing songs about Jesus while sitting in the backseat of our car. My songs literally moved me to tears on more than one occasion. I remember the night I sang Christmas songs to the audience of our living room window as if I was in a large holiday choir and the window was a massive audience. Or the time when I was really young and I danced around in a slip and my Easter hat all the while singing at the top of my lungs. Yeah. Chagrin, people.

So Karis is following (or singing) right along in my footsteps, turning all of life into a melody. Most of the time her songs are kind of a mish-mash of whatever seems to pop into her head at the moment, which, most of the time, revolves around puppies. "Puppies" is probably sung every second or third word in her songs. And what's funny is that as I sit here writing this, Matt just came in to inform me that he just overheard Karis talking in her sleep. This is what he heard, (Cough. Cough.) "Puppies! Puppies! Puppies!" (Cough. Cough.--Remember the sickness part above?) So, yes, she even sings in her sleep.

My favorite tunes as of late are the songs of lament. Often, when she is sad about something, she will turn her crying into a mournful ballad. Her tempo slows down, her voice goes down low and then up high, and she sings in the most pitiful, warbling way. She'll sometimes stop and look at me proclaiming, "Sad." Then she'll go back to singing/howling her sad little song. I think she's a natural-born blues singer...or a repressed Irish folk singer. I love this part of her, though, and I'm convinced even my brother would find her singing kind of cute.

Following in Mommy's footsteps, Karis is singing from the backseat of the car.