The best thing about James is his laugh. It is, hands down, the best laugh and giggle in the world. At night, when I turn out the lights and am putting him to bed, he laughs through the entire process -- laughing, sucking his patented fingers and snuggling into me. He often laughs to the point where he gets the hiccups. He laughs at jokes of others but especially at his own silly jokes.
An example of his wonderful absurdity: The other day, Alma asked him an
elephant joke* of "How do you get an elephant in a tree?" to which he responded something about babies eating cake and then taking a shower with a mole, all the while laughing his head off. She asked the question again and he gave the exact same answer with even more giggling. I had to explain to her, my literalist, that he was answering her question but that his answer was just especially creative. [You will have to ask her for the "correct" answer to that riddle.]
There are very few things that James doesn't like. He is getting into marketed toys these days. The other day he told me that he loves Paw Patrol (which he cutely called Helpful Pups for a few months), Lightning McQueen from Cars, Thomas the Train, princesses, playing soccer, football and basketball, running, riding his bike, and balloons. For Christmas, he wanted Santa to give him a video of Paw Patrol episodes as he had only ever watched the show when in someones car on the way to a school field trip.
He exudes love and affection, always giving us hugs and kisses throughout the day. At the end of the school day, he gives hugs to all the teachers and any student willing to take one. This isn't common practice so it is cute to see the teachers react with a bit of surprise that the practice continues so religiously. On his pretend birthday (December 24th this year) which we set aside for him to open presents, he would break out into a funny stutter step/backup dance whenever presented with a gift. He was just too excited to simply receive it.
James loves to wrestle, especially with his cousins Andrew and Tristan who are older. Parties often have an out of breathe James, with wild hair, spurring them on to continue wrestling him gently. Any time he can get Alma and me to wrestle (which we do far less often now that we do not have a dedicated futon for the practice), he can go for hours and whines relentlessly when we try to stop.
He loves to play games, including board games, and is a great sport about losing and very sweet when he wins. We play a lot of UNO. I'm excited for him to play more chess, as he always does well when we play.
He has also spent a majority of his life pretending to be a dog. Earlier this year, he was a pretend dog for a solid two months, sometimes named "1-E" and sometimes "Knucklehead" but always pronounced to be a very fast girl dog. This afternoon, while napping, I heard him say "woof" in his sleep. (I'm serious.)
James gets a good deal of attention for his very blond hair, which is rather long. He does not want me to cut it as he wants to grow it until it can go into a pony tail, which Joshua's did while he was in high school. Occasionally, James will let me trim the back so that it does not become a mullet.
James is a love.
* An elephant joke is a joke, almost always an absurd riddle or conundrum and often a sequence of such, that involves an elephant.
