"He knew how to count forward, backward. He knew his colors," Sheila Gaskin said of her two-year-old grandson Sincere Tymere Smith. "He was a very smart baby."
And he had more than just brains: "He had a gorgeous smile. Very gorgeous."
Pastor Monford Hamilton, who has known the Smith family for 20 years, agreed: "He was usually laughing, and always with his father. Always with his father. If he needed any type of attention or care, it was his father," Hamilton told msnbc.
Gaskin, Sincere's grandmother, lives across the street from the Smiths in Conway, S.C., and saw Sincere every day. She calls her son-in-law Rondell "Mr. Mom" since he spent so much time with Sincere and his baby daughter Soniya. "He's the one who'd get up in the middle of the night, change the diapers. It was always him," Gaskin said to msnbc.
A gregarious toddler, Sincere also loved anything on Nickelodeon and Nick Jr.
"He was just a playful little boy," Pastor Hamilton said. "He was happy."
Sincere picked up his father's gun off a table in their Conway home and accidentally shot himself in the chest. He died en route to the hospital on Christmas night, 2012.