The sound of laughter

in Random Crap

Today is Thursday which means that I don’t have to write a real post and instead can just post something old for Throwback Thursday.  YAY FOR BEING LAZY.

This is Hailey when she was four, attempting to explain what she saw at the planetarium. It makes no sense and I don’t recommend the whole thing, but from 17 seconds to the one minute mark is the sound of the ridiculously contagious laughter that only comes when you’re very young or very drunk.  (She’s the first.)  I hope it makes you smile because if it doesn’t you might be missing a soul.  Or maybe you just need to watch some cat videos.  Or videos of people falling.  Whatever does it for you.

171 thoughts on “The sound of laughter”

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  7. Absolutely adorable! Love the laughter of children. My two year old nephew has the most gorgeous laugh. You can’t be in a bad mood when you spend time with him!

  8. Laughter really is contagious. I was once in a play where another person and I were supposed to break into spontaneous laughter at a third person who walked onstage wearing a ridiculous outfit. It really was a funny outfit, but after seeing it many times, not so much. HOWEVER (there really is a point here), the “pretend” laughter always turned to the real thing very quickly, just by starting. (We’re talking rolling around on the stage crying and holding on to each other laughter.)

    Hmm…maybe I should remember that more often.

  9. It’s a cow, it’s ice, there is Saturn, and planets, little bits and pieces, when our car was made of ice, there was this cow, but it was a pretend cow and IT’S ALL INTERCONNECTED, ZOMG! THE UNIVERSE IS ONE AND OUR CAR IS A COW IS ICE IS SATURN!!
    This child is a genius. Get her hooked up with Torchwood at once!

  10. Kids laughing are the absolute best thing ever. My 9 month old is getting that belly laugh thing down and it has helped bring me out of some very dark days.

  15. Absolutely adorable! Love the laughter of children! My 2 year old nephew has the most gorgeous laugh! You can’t be in a bad mood when you’re hanging out with him!

  16. My husband totally got me laughing like that last week. And the weird part? I don’t even remember what he said that got me laughing–it was just something that struck me so funny that I couldn’t control how hard I was laughing, and then I ended up laughing about how ridiculous my uncontrolled laughing was.

    tl;dr Belly laughs are therapeutic, and there’s a reason I married my husband.

  24. That was awesome… But now I think we all want the answer to the really important question: WHY was there a cow made of ice on Saturn (either the planet or the car)?

  26. Adorable and btw, parents don’t quiz your kids unless you want to hear that “goodbye”.

  33. This is exactly what I needed. Thank you Jenny for sharing and thank you TBT for existing for lazy people everywhere.

  36. Thank you, this helped me remember that my 4-year old’s giggly ridiculousness is completely age appropriate and normal. I really do enjoy her weirdness, but sometimes . . .

  38. I have fallen down the internet hole of watching other movies of her and am dying! I made it to pigeon robots and just can’t…it’s too good…”I don’t know why they did that, I couldn’t find any videos online…”

  39. We should never lose the ability to laugh at stuff like she’s doing. If I have one wish for Hailey for the rest her life, it’s that she still finds time for laughing like this always.

  42. Something very similar was going on at about 7:30 AM here at my place of work. One of our techs brought in a book his son brought home, the title is “The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts”. We passed around the book and took turns reading it out loud and giggling for a good half an hour, proving once and for all that we are all 12 year old boys at heart, including me (a 34 year old woman). Our boss has decided that this will be the inaugural selection for a company book club. Titles to follow will be “Everybody Poops” and “All My Friends Are Dead”. This may be the ONLY book club I stick with.

  45. Seriously, that is the cutest goddamn kid I have ever seen. It’s not fair you also have Hunter S. Thomcat, the cutest goddamn ginger cat in the world.

  47. I need to check out that planetarium. Did you ask the chaperones what they served for snack on the way home?… Your child is a HOOT!

  51. It’s reminding me of a friend’s FB update the other day about wanting to turn her grandson’s laugh into her phone ringtone. You definitely need to do that with this laugh 🙂

  52. OHMYGOSH I love when my 10 year old kitten does this. When I can get that genuine giggle… day made 🙂

  53. No. Our car is not made of ice.

    OMG, I needed that today. I was about to lose my shit, and now I’m just smiling, smiling.

  54. Hailey (and her laugh) are utterly adorable! Her in bridled enthusiasm and joy remind me of my 5-year-old daughter!
    The Suzz: Don’t forget “Go the F@ck to Sleep!” for the book club!
    I so want the next Face Off Spotlight challenge to be “design an ice cow that would live on the planet Saturn!”

    Thanks for the laughs!

  56. One time.. when I was very young (maybe 8?) I was at church with my Dad, Stepmother and two Step sisters. We were on vacation so it was not the church we normally went to. It was a “small town” church. There might have been 30 people there.. well, to make a long story short – I got the giggles during the sermon. Not the good giggles.. the BAD giggles. And my bad giggles begat more giggles which begat more giggles which spawned purely evil giggles. My stepsister to my immediate right caught them and it turned into 10 minutes of crying and snorting that could not be stopped. It was so horrifyingly awesome that I remember every detail of it to this day nearly 40 years later.. especially the part where my father was staring daggers at me trying to get me to stop.

  57. Yesterday, I attended the funeral of a friend from college – she was only 50. This morning, I received word that my oldest friend from grammar school took her own life. The Hailey giggles are much appreciated.

  59. You know that when she’s 15 she’s be really mad about this? Therefore, you should just go for it and show it to every boy she brings over. (Hopefully, it’s not that many. )

  60. Here’s what you need to do: have Hailey watch this video, and then re-enact it and send us the new video! She was cute then and she is cute now. WIN!

  64. While giggling at Hailey and her ice cow what I was really thinking of was how to get 4-year-old Hailey (this will obviously require a Tardis or other time-traveling contraption) to the Ohio State Fair to see the life-size butter cow display. They still have it every year, so she could still go see it THIS August, but it is 4-year-old Hailey’s reaction that I’d PAY to see. 🙂

  65. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m terrified of children and don’t understand them at all and have the feeling that if I were to get pregnant I might go psychotic and try to kill it, your adorable kidlet would ALMOST make me wanna have one of my own. That, dear lady, is impressive.

  67. Love it! Thanks for the laugh!

    And I’m like the recycled-stuff/throwback Thursday idea–it could translate well into lots of areas of our lives.
    On throwback Thursday, I could…
    1. Wear 80s clothes all day and, like, speak only Valley Girl.
    2. Remind everyone that their laundry WAS done. Last week.
    3. Plaster my desk with pictures of me back when I weighed my CORRECT weight.

    We may be on to something here.

  71. I was thrilled with the cow made of ice on Saturn. I was bummed to find out the ice was on your car and there were possibly no cows involved. The giggling was great. I almost cried. (Apparently it’s been a worse month than I realized. 😀 I love you, Jenny! Just keep swimming!

  78. I want you to play this video at her wedding, introduced by you saying, “May you always be this happy.”
    That’ll be major stress for the groom.

  83. Beautiful, lovely child! Little girls can be the most healing little creatures! That giggle is the best.

  84. Sweetness. Pure and so so so dear. And I want to see an ice cow and an ice car. Or the ice cow driving the ice car. Yes, that.

  86. I have one just like her. She’s 8 now. She is the reason I work so hard to fight (and hide) my depression.

  88. My daughter did something similar to this at the same age. We didn’t capture it on video, but I can still hear her pure, joy-filled laughter. Thanks for the reminder that sometimes we take ourselves too seriously and need to recapture that innocent, child-like happiness.

  89. I love laughter like this! Whenever my kids read We are in a Book and Elephant and Piggie make the reader say banana, my kids (days away from 5 and a month and a half away from 7) laugh like this. It is the best sound in the world even though my house looks like a tornado has torn through it and I’d rather pull teeth from a crocodile rather than get them ready for school some mornings. 😀

  91. hahahha that is quite contagious laughter! Love it.

    Also, I should have just jumped on the Throwback Thursday train today…. clearly a much better idea than attempting to write anything that made sense…..

  96. Okay, I have been watching clips of ‘Kid President’. You two totally need to a campaign for something awesome together. Seriously. Just idea. Just Youtube search for him if you havent heard of him. Tho, you prob have. Same awesome laughter used for good!

  98. Way too much fun! Worth keeping forever, or until the wedding reception, or both.
    I totally love the Wallace and Grommet face that she made at 1:55. Sometimes I totally feel that way and don’t realize how it translates to my face

  99. I keep a recording of each of my children laughing on my cell phone. Since it’s not a smart phone, it allows me to at least perk up when I’m away from them and traveling for work. Everyone needs a good laugh each day and kids have the best laughs of all!

  101. I loves me some Hailey. Plus, my little boy is almost 4 now and these sorts of “explanations” are currently very common in our house. It’s the greatest.

  102. I spent the morning with my aging dad and we shared some tears today. Man, did I NEED Hailey’s laughter. A sincere ‘thank you’ for sharing that gift with us. God Bless You. 🙂 And keep posting that funny shit.

  103. The best part is the squeak in the middle of the giggle fit. That’s when you know it’s a really good one!
    Thanks, I needed some giggling today!!

  104. My son has the best laugh ever! I hear it and I just want to start laughing. My daughter’s unfortunately is just plain annoying – poor kid.

  105. There is nothing quite like the sound of a childs laughter at night.
    Except when you live alone, then it is just creepy.

  108. The reaction from 0:17 to 1:00 was exactly my reaction after reading the first chapter of your book. I was neither drunk nor very young (or even kinda young for that matter). I decided to read in bed before I went to sleep and I got a case of the giggles. Even after I turned off the light, the giggles continued – and then I’d catch my breath and start giggling again. It was wonderful!

  110. And this is EXACTLY why I recommend children and animals to everyone I know. There is no joy like that kind of joy. There is no time to wallow when you’re pulled up by that kind of glee, of living in the moment. Spontaneous happiness seems to be the birthright of all children, and yes, our pets. We can’t deny it.

  111. OMG THAT LAUGH! That was the best laugh I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t stop giggling myself!!!

  112. I like that Hailey…oh, and you too. I wish I had more videos of my kids when they were young…but, back in the day, we only had new-fangled, big-ass video recorders that were nearly impossible to use or understand — and we had to walk 10 miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways 🙂

  113. Just precious. And I totally get how there could be ice-cows and ice-cars on Saturn. But, then, I see seahorses and dragons and all kinds of things in clouds, too…

  115. My heart just emerged from it’s icy winter prison and grew three sizes. Thanks for this!

  116. My child is 25. I need a grandchild, just this age, who appreciates a really weird grandpa. Jenny, nothing is better than a child’s laughter. Nothing.
    But you knew that.

  117. Thanks, Jenny! I just love when you post pictures of Hailey and this video is just too much! She is such an adorable kid. She makes my heart happy!

  118. That was EXACTLY what I needed in my life just now. THANK YOU. And thanks to Hailey too for her contagious laughter! Depression lies and laughter is possible 🙂

  121. That was wonderful: )

    I’m happy to say my family have retained the ability to laugh until we cry….usually long after the joke stops being funny to anyone else.

    Here’s to giggles and smiles. Happy Thursday: )

  122. I started giggling right along with her. My one-year-old daughter is at the shrieking stage of laughter and it just kills me. Kids are just awesome.

  123. That is awesome. By the way, my wife and I listened to the audiobook of “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” on our annual December drive from Massachusetts to Michigan via the frozen wastes of Ontario. At one point on Highway 402, I was laughing so hard that tears came into my eyes and I thought I might need to pull over onto the shoulder, since I couldn’t see the road. It was when your niece Gabi put the dead raccoon next to your father’s head on the pillow. That was awesome, too. Apparently as midnight approaches I am way too fond of “awesome” as an adjective.

  126. My son is officially in love with Hailey. He’s 6 1/2 and has expressed interest in pursuing careers as a chef, a pilot, a ninja, and a librarian. (Actuarial data on his future earning potential can be made available, upon request.) According to him, she’s “the real deal” because “she cackles just like mommy”. And who can argue with an endorsement like that? xoxo Your Future In-Law Megan

  129. she’s awesome! My daughter makes some of the same faces… Especially when she’s trying to explain something that I’m not quite grasping. Kids are awesome.

  130. your daughter is soooo adorable.. she makes me smile. today i had an interesting experience. i took library books back to the drive thru. if you try to get close to the drive thru you will take your side mirrors off and you still have to undo your seatbelt and open the door, so i generally park thru. today an older man (late 70’s) and his wife were walking passed me. he handed me a small piece of paper which i gracious took, thanked, and put it in the cup holder. i figured is was religious info.
    imagine my surprise when i read the small note at home this was a comment given to ann landers
    It seems that when the good Lord was making the world, he called Man aside and bestowed upon him 20 years of normal sex life. Man was horrified, but the Creator refused to budge. Then the Lord called the monkey and gave him 20 years. “But I don’t need 20 years,” said the monkey. “Ten years is plenty.” Man spoke up and said: “May I have the other 10 years?” The monkey agreed. The Lord called on the lion and also gave him 20 years. The lion, too, wanted only 10. Again Man spoke up. “May I have the other 10 years?” “Of course.” said the lion. (hang on, getting there) Then came the donkey who was also given 20 years. Like the others 10 years was enough. So again Man asked and was given the spare years.
    punch line:
    This explains why Man has 20 years of normal sex, 10 years of monkeying around, 10 years of lion about it and 10 years of making a jackass out of himself

    god, i love old people!! my mother used to wait at the end of the front sidewalk and give away one shoe. fortunately, my dear sweet neighbors always gave them back to me

  131. Oh THANK THE GODS…..it seems I have a soul. And here I thought I lost mine a while back. It’s good to know it was returned, I feel a lot better about actually living today. She is super freaking cute I sorta need to hurl marshmallows in her general direction.

  132. You were trying to “harsh her mellow” with all your reality questions and she just wiggled her way through it, slowing down only slightly. Politicians could learn a thing or two from her.

  133. One of the most beautiful sounds ever is a child laughing. One of the best things to listen to is a child telling a story. They are perfect in every way even though they might not make sense to us ‘grown ups’ but they sure make sense to the kids telling the story!

  134. Best thing I’ve seen all day – nothing is quite as infectious as a small child laughing. Unless its a drunk Auntie laughing at small children. Yep, that was me last weekend. Setting a good example.

  135. Jupiter has a moon named Io after one of Zeus’s lovers, who was turned into a cow.

    Sounds like Hailey learned a lot at the planetarium; it just got a little jumbled. : )

  136. It will be memories of things like this that will keep you from selling her to the gypsies when she’s 14-17. Because you’ll want to.

  139. When ever I hear a child laugh, I am reminded of when I heard my son laugh for the first time. We were riding in the car and it was raining lightly. There was enough water to need the windshield wipers, but not enough rain at the same time. The wipers would squeak on the second swipe across the windshield, which was apparently hilarious, causing my 5 or 6 month old son to giggle ecstatically. My mother was in the car with us, and we all just started laughing so hard I had to pull over to the side and stop driving. I couldn’t breathe I was laughing so hard. That was over 30 years ago. I’ll never forget it. I know the exact spot on the road where we were, too.

  143. My daughter toots when she laughs that hard, and then it makes her laugh harder. And then it makes ME laugh….and since having 2 kids when I laugh that hard, I pee. So we’re both laughing uncontrollably, she’s tooting and I’m peeing. Good times.

  144. My three-year-old and I just watched this video. Your daughter seemed to make perfect sense to him because he started laughing and commenting on her story. Must be kid language.

  146. My 3.5 year old daughter just watched this with me and her only comment was “Cows aren’t made of ice, they’re made of cowboys! Duh!” Behold my amazing parenting skills!

  148. I love that she’s holding her belly while she’s laughing. What a precious girl. 🙂

  149. I don’t know what was funnier, the video or watching the faces of my dog and cat who were both next to the laptop the whole time. The dog’s head practically came off she’d cocked it to the side so far and my (mostly-recovered-from-feral) kitty was bristling and bobbing up and down trying desperately to find the obviously crazed thing about to attack her. But she didn’t bolt, so some of Hailey’s magical happiness obviously soothed her enough to prevent a total nuclear, feral freakout! 🙂

  157. One of the things I loved most about my daughter’s visit from college this past December, was listening to her brother and her laugh together over something stupid on TV. it went on for minutes and it was the best sound ever. It really is contagious and wonderful.

  159. A Throwback Thursday overflowing with heart from one of the best in the business. (Seriously, there’s heart all over the bell Desk now. It’s crazy!)
    Well done, ladies.

  161. I am highly amused that my cat ran across the room at the sound of her laughing and avidly watched the entire video!

  162. My nephew is four, and this sounds pretty much the way it does when he’s excited and trying to explain something to us. In other words, awesome.

  164. My daughter is 5 (going on 25), but her laugh is just as amazing as Hailey’s. I hope neither of them ever grows out of it!

  165. Please post that 45 second segment each and every Monday. Thank you. Love, the Internet.

  167. You HOPE it makes us smile? Boy, you need to aim higher. That was a given! A wonderful tonic. Thank you…

  169. Ahhhhh! This made me belly laugh! She’s adorable and her laugh is the awesomest. I needed this today… and your 50% off hamster post. Hysterical! PS: Congrats on finishing the book. Yes! I just tripled up on comments in one box. See how I did that? Hope all is well. xoxo

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