We'd been trying for weeks to get a real laugh out of you. Funny voices, peekaboo, mama doing little dances, papa playing the worst songs we could think of. Nothing.
Then today, lying on the mat after lunch, you looked up at the ceiling fan as you'd looked at it a hundred times — and you laughed. A real one. Three of them in a row, like a tiny cough but happy. Mama froze with her phone halfway out of her pocket and missed the recording, which is exactly right because the first one belonged to us.
The ceiling fan was just doing what ceiling fans do. We've left it on more often since.