“Mommah, you are my best best BESTEST friend.”  Red.

“Actually, she der is a mom.  Not a friend.”  Blonde (aka The Lawyer).

“Well.  She’s da best mom.”  Red.  He is clearly winning this argument.

And yes, I do know that, really, I am not supposed to be the friend.  I am da MOM.  But for right now…  I’ll take the cuteness.  And that afternoon, driving home from the grocers, my Red decided to give me a hug.  Don’t worry, he was still buckled in and all.

You can easily give hugs with your words.

Later that day, Red and Blonde are working with crayons and massive piles of paper at the table.  I am making dinner.  Red draws his twuck; Blonde leans over, inspects it.  I hold my breath.

“Dat’s a dumptruck right der!  Good job, Red!”

“Thanks!”

Just that simple.  It hugged my heart,  I tell you.

Every morning, I slip a post- it note into my husband’s lunch bag.  Most of the time, they are simple notations of why I love him so:

  Specific: “Thank you for fixing the water heater.”

 Observant:  “My goodness I could eat off this floor!   You rock.”*

 Southern:  “You are the butter on my grits.”

 Saucy:  “You are the melty butter on my grits.”

Most Effective:  “You are hot.”

These notes are not brilliantly crafted, I tell you.  They are written at 5 am, so it’s a good thing they even make it IN the lunch container.  But I think they make the point.  He needs all the hugs he can get, scrawled on post-it notes or otherwise.

But here is the best part:  when I scribble those short hugs, it creates a great (and needed) amnesia about any frustrations we might be dealing with in our household.  He likes to decorate our house, for example, with his very large and very prolific shoes.  Like, everywhere.  Those post-it notes somehow make the shoes hide away.

It’s magic, I tell you.

In all relationships, shoes are gonna be scattered.  They should be put away properly, of course, I know.  But really?  They are just shoes.

* I think it’s important to state, for the record, it was the bathroom.  He cleaned it like a true engineer.  It took over an hour.   I believe he had an actual processing system doo-hickey** going on.  He used other words like, “optimize,” and “quality assessment.” Our bathroom never had a chance.  He cleaned that thing top down, from left to right, and I think there was some weird serpentine sort of “due analysis of environmental factors” as well.  I have no idea what that means.

I did not test my eating on the floor theory, but I COULDA.  It. Was. AMAZING.

**Technical term. Pretty sure.