While in Pittsburgh for Grampap’s funeral, we often congregated at Grandma’s house with the family.  Little kids often lighten events like these, because they innocently are clueless to the gravity of the situation.

Claire was getting a kick out of running around to everyone in the living room and interacting on many levels.  At one point she stood up and ran about six feet – fast – right towards Uncle Ernie.  Now, Uncle Ernie is a big, shall we say teddy bear shaped man.  When Claire reached him, she immediately bounced off his belly and landed flat on her back on the floor.

After the initial daze, and as the entire room was cracking up, Claire stood up and stumbled back to the middle of the room.  As she gained perspective, Claire realized that we were laughing at her and that she must’ve done something amusing.  Loving the attention, Claire quickly turned and ran back to Uncle Ernie and, consequently, repeated her previous performance.

At this point, I’m laughing so hard that I’d damn near peed myself.  I think Uncle Ernie was a little embarrassed, though, because he got up a few minutes later and didn’t return to that chair for the remainder of the day.