3:05 p.m. and I hear hands rattling the spokes on the stairs. “Hey, Munchkin, you up?” I call.
“Yes.” Michael pads into my bedroom, where I’m channeling my childhood by writing while stretched out across my bed. “Mommy, why do you call me Munchkin?”
“Because I like to call you loving, silly names. Like boo boy. Or Little Man. Or belly boy. Are you my boo boy?”
“No!”
“You’re not? Are you my little bunch of grapes?”
“No!” (Giggle.)
“Are you…my Captain America?”
“No!”
“Well then, what are you?”
Giggle again. “I’m just your regular Michael!”
“Oh, you’re my regular Michael! Well come here, my regular Michael.” (Commence chewing and kissing and “Aunt Tamara” chewing.) Michael climbs on top of me and we snuggle and tickle for a while. Then Michael looks over at the wall. “Why do you have a cross on the wall?”
“We have one downstairs, too.”
“No, we don’t have one downstairs!”
“We certainly do. It’s on the living room wall. But it’s not called a cross. It’s a special kind of cross, called a crucifix, because it has Jesus being crucified on it.”
“No, it’s not called a crucifix!”
“Oh, yes it is.”
“No, it isn’t!” Giggle and collapse on my chest.
“Hey, Mr. Not-yet-four years old, don’t mess with your mommy on Catholic stuff.”
“Mommy, that’s what you should call me!”
“Mr. Not-yet-four years old?”
“Yes!” Giggle giggle. “Can we go downstairs? I want a fruit snack.”
And thus ends another episode of cute post-nap moments with Michael Mayhem, of whom you would never believe, looking at him, that he is capable of ripping the leg off Julianna’s very special Disney World Tinker Bell doll.
The cuter they are, the more danger they hide. Just sayin’.
Kathleen M. Basi 