Elijah Truman is my Son. In this picture, he is once again reminding me that I need not take life so seriously. A few weeks ago, I had to fly to Chicago for a meeting so I decided to bring the little man along so he could spend some time with gramma and pa. He was so very excited to be on this journey with me that at first it seemed that he forgot to bring his mischievous self along on the trip. We departed from Oakland. He was very serious…as was I. We both had a lot on our minds. He was peering out the glass terminal, anxiously waiting for the “rocket ship” and I was rehearsing in my head the ten thousand reasons why my dear client should place substantially all their print-eggs in our basket. We boarded the plane and mostly kept to ourselves, he in his world and me in mine. Once we got going though, the stir craziness set in for both of us and we enjoyed a 4 hour case of the “silly willy’s” we laughed and tickled each other, we watched Toy Story, we read stories, we made weird noises, we kicked the seat in front of us a hundred thousand times, we drank tons of apple juice, we prayed for mommy, we kicked the guy in front of us some more…and then we (he) fell asleep. 45 minutes after that we arrived at Midway. While we were waiting for our bags, I began getting my serious “game face” on. I mean, I had to manage the little man, identify and grab our bags, coordinate our pick up with gramma and pa, call Rebecca to let her know we were alive, call my boss to let him know I was in town and ready to rock, urinate, change a diaper, administer a time out, and probably 3 or 4 other things I can’t remember….it was serious time.

Anyhow….Once we made our way to the baggage claim, I quickly identified one of our 3 bags. I muscled in and grabbed it and set it down. I asked Eli to watch it for me so I could focus on getting the other 2. He immediately saw an opportunity to lighten the mood. He went over to the bag and laid down next to it. Before he even made his next move he started laughing uncontrollably. Then he reached up and grabbed the bag and pulled in on top of himself and started laughing and hollering so loud that people were watching and laughing hysterically. This of coarse caused him to go into full show boat mode and lead into a full rendition of all his current animal sounds at the top of his lungs. I couldn’t help but be as proud as I’d ever been of him. Once again, he leveraged his gift of humor and levity to bless those around him. Stay tuned, I believe he is the real deal…