Ham With Integrity
It turns out that Raimi takes after his father, and not just because he has big feet.
Like his dad, Raimi has a hammy side — he likes to entertain people, but only if it emerges naturally out of the situation. He likes to keep things on his own terms. Raimi, like his dad, is nobody’s dancing monkey.
In his dad’s case, this means Kevin can sit down at a piano and play for an hour, and people can even comment on how nice it sounds or ask what song is that, but if you ask Kevin to play, he won’t do it.
It turns out this may be an inborn trait. In Raimi’s case:
Since about three months, he never really liked to do the talking back & forth thing. He’ll be babbling away, making crazy cooing sounds and going ba ba ba ba and you’ll say back to him, “ba ba ba ba” and he’ll get all quiet and just listen…. and then maybe look another way, and then maybe try out “da da da da.” Sometimes he thinks it’s funny that you’re repeating what he has said, but at a certain point, I think he knows that you’re trying to get him to be “cute.”
The other day at Uncle Jason’s house, Raimi was doing the most hilarious thing ever — his first joke, really. I think it started because he was just trying to see out the sides of his pack and play, but he pressed his whole face against the mesh sides, and it was just so funny because he looked all smooshed.
So I was laughing at him, and then he thought that was funny, so I put my face up to the mesh to show him how funny and smooshed it looks, and he thought that was even funnier. And pretty soon, we were both going, “bwuuuh” and smooshing our faces against the mesh sides and laughing hysterically. Tears were running down my face, and I couldn’t stop laughing, and Raimi just thought that was the best thing.
(You can see pictures of this if you scroll down this page.)
So later, I tried to get him to show his Uncle Jason and Grammy Iris, and he was like, “No ma, the mood’s gone. The joke’s over, and anyway I’ve got some very important lamby snuggling to do, and plus that book hasn’t been chewed on, so anyway, sorry. “