A Little Baby Sean Penn

One of the things that has surprised me the most about having a six-month old is the fact that this baby, this baby who can't walk or talk or wipe his own ass, really seems to me to have the most exquisite sense of humor.

I would have thought that having a sense of humor is something that develops when he's older, like in a rudimentary way maybe when he starts making fart jokes at age 3 or 4, and in a more sophisticated way when he starts making puns or something when he's 5 or 6? If I'm lucky. I mean, Mr. Newt and I used to laugh over the idea that our baby might not have any sense of humor at all, and we wouldn't know what to do with our serious little grumble-bunny.

Remember when Amy Poehler and Will Arnett were expecting their baby and they joked that he would be...wait, let me get the exact quote:

Poehler: We think we might have the most unfunniest child.
Arnett: We have always imagined that we'd have a Sean Penn-like child.
Poehler: A little baby Sean Penn.
Arnett: Real brooding, Method-y actor.
Poehler: Smokin' all the time....I hope my baby doesn't smoke. I don't know what kind of baby we're gonna have. I really should get on this.

Can you imagine? If Mr. Newt and I had a baby who would take the stage at the Academy Awards in a fit of self-important pique and berate Chris Rock for making a joke about Jude Law? A thin-skinned, sour-faced killjoy? That baby would put in a petition for new parents roughly in kindergarten. We pick on Jude Law all the time around here (when I can recognize him).

So anyway, humor. I've been kind of watching for it, but assumed it was too early to manifest. But I think I assumed wrong.


I mean, look at this face. This child is a conoisseur of the hilarious. You can call me crazy, but I swear to you my little pre-verbal drool factory here is like the Stephen Colbert of the diaper set.

Not only is he an appreciative audience for parental comedy (my inexpert reading of Sandra Boynton's Doggies: A Counting and Barking Book absolutely brought the house down at bedtime last night), but there's something adorably wry about his outlook in general. He seems to be looking at the world and waiting for it to make him laugh.

And lately, he also seems to be going out of his way to make ME laugh. When he does something funny and I laugh at him, he laughs back, and indeed looks very very pleased with himself. We crack each other up, sometimes so loudly Mr. Newt wanders in from the other room to find out what all the ruckus is about. I usually tell him, jubilantly, that the newtlet and I were just making fun of Jude Law.

So internet, I think this baby and I are going to have a lot of good times together, you know? And we haven't even started on the fart jokes yet.