Last week I showed four-year-old Anthony with a messy face, and received comments like “that's not a messy face,” with commenters recklessly comparing my well-behaved four-year-old with their snotty-nosed incorrigibles as infants.

Well, I used to have one of those, too 🙂

11-Month-Old Anthony in Various Stages of Un-Eat

Notice the rice in his nose in the left-hand picture.

Anyway, here's a followup to the messy face post. When asked to smile for the camera, Anthony tries, but it's a very fake, plastic smile. So while taking pictures of his messy face, I did various things to try to get him to laugh.

The first picture below is just after I made a loud sound..... mouseover the boxed letters below the image to see subsequent views (with the number of seconds between)....

A   ← 3 sec →   B   ← 3 sec →   C   ← 7 sec →   D   ← 9 sec →   E

mouseover a button to see that image

Whatever it was that made him laugh soon melted into a slow-developing cry. I think he was fairly tired and ready for a nap. A hug helped.

Here's a bonus pic I ran across while looking in the archives for messy faces: Anthony, aged 1 year 10 months, and spaghetti: