Some days Eli’s general M.O. is to hit first, come up with reasons later. So he’ll whack you in the arm, and then you say, “Hey! Why did you just hit me in the arm?” and he’ll say, “Um…I was mad at your arm.”
Last week he said something like this to Dave, and Dave said, “You don’t look mad” which immediately prompted Eli to make a hilarious “mean face.” Which of course led to me filming said face. The following video is broken into four parts:
- Eli does his mean face; Eli does his happy face.
- Henry tries to do a mean face, but it immediately becomes clear that he takes after me and doesn’t do Mean very well. His mean face consists of scrunching up his nose, and then becoming distracted by his own scrunched nose, which he keeps feeling with his hand.
- Eli does another round of mean and happy, though this time he takes a cue from Henry and feels his nose.
- Eli tries one last time, but has completely lost all mean-ness and can’t stop smiling during his mean face. Plus he upgrades the hand-on-nose happy face by trying to blow his nose into his hand.
Enjoy!
Hugh loved the video and had me replay it several times. I’m certain that as soon as Ian wakes up they’ll start doing faces at one another now!
I meant to show this to Sam last night! He’ll love it. Part 4 is Oscar-worthy.
me too, tonight. it’s funny, right on schedule: just 3 weeks ago, I noticed wylie furrowing his eyebrows. he got this look from gran, and his cousin fiona (the dark princess of norwalk) and is clearly practicing it. i was a little sad, because, before gran said, “are you mad? are you furrowing your eyebrows?” dude didn’t have this look in his arsenal…he’s sort of a sweet guy, you know? and now he has it, and uses it. maybe I should be happy, because now he has an outlet for anger, which is an emotion he has sometimes, and will have more as life goes on, i guess.
I totally agree about part 4 being Oscar-worthy. I was impressed (and also a bit frightened) by his ability to pull it back together.
Em, Eli applies his mean face liberally to life, but it’s almost always meant as a joke. His true “mean face” is more of an indignant I-can’t-believe-you-aren’t-giving-me-what-I-want face. I’m a little tired of that face, frankly.
So, as promised, this morning we spent many minutes looking at madface/happy face. he thinks it’s very funny, but not as funny as zuzu in bath, and zuzu with firehat, which he watched many, many times each. he asked if we could make a video, but in his dream, evidently, it is YOU DO mad face and DADDY do happy face and then you DO happy face and DADDY do mad face. He is a director, I guess, not actor. I’ll send if we swing it tonight. And if he’s on it. you don’t need to see scott and i doing mad/happy calistenics!
Of course he’s the director! He’s got these parents who are tripping over themselves to outdo themselves doing the best possible voices for every story they read aloud to him. What do you expect? Of course he only sees you two as the actors (and he’s three, so he’s naturally the director anyway).