During the four or five days of my partial demise and subsequent convalescence, it’s been noisy around the house.

There are many sound sources.

My hugely rumbling huge abdomen has been producing a touching background. The loss of appetite has lessened, but the crippled sense of taste hasn’t learned to walk again yet. So I’m hungry, but can’t bear to put down much food. Everything tastes like sponge, the kind produced by a week’s fermentation after wiping down a horse’s backside.

Eric has learned a few new ways to amuse himself: emitting a high-pitched, 20-second screech, signifying a medium degree of delight. Sometimes this is structured as a sweet staccato, whose volume does not reach to the ear-splitting horrors he can emit when he’s mad. That’s the way to know that this is a happy sound. The screech is often accompanied by wild multi-appendagial gesticulation. If he were any older, some silly government might give him an arts grant to develop it.

The other Eric innovation is giggling. He’s again roughtly on schedule in being able to produce the most hilarious giggles, when the situation is just right. He can be tickled, or he can be laughed-at from up close, and if his little mind can think of nothing better to do, he can smile and laugh back. If the stimulation continues, this escalates into a long, drawn-out silly laugh. This is supposed to be one of those reward-oriented development milestones that occur periodically with infants. They reward the parents for putting up with all the crap since the last one. Seems to work on us.