Once upon a time, I started singing “You are my sunshine” to my children while brushing their teeth.
Then someone pointed out the ridiculousness of telling each of my children that they were my “only” sunshine.
I started singing “My precious sunshine”.
But then someone else pointed out that they were not in fact sunshine.
I tried to explain how it was figurative language, but somehow all this child *cough*Tirzah Mae*cough* got was that I was singing falsehoods. She decided if I was going to sing falsehoods, I might as well sing falsehoods she liked. She requested that I sing that she was my baby.
You are my baby, my precious baby,
You make me happy when skies are gray
And when I think, dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my Tirzah Mae away
Other times, she insists that she’s not a baby but a mama. So I sing:
You’re Moses’s mama, precious Moses’s mama,
You make me happy when skies are gray
And when I think, dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take Moses’s mama away
Louis was eager to get in on the game – but unlike his sister, his selections are only consistent in their variedness.
So I might sing
“You are my dump-truck-carrying-a-large-load-of-dirt boy, my precious dump-truck-carrying-a-large-load-of-dirt boy…”
or maybe
“You are my green-tool-carrying, ant-killing boy, my precious green-tool-carrying, ant-killing boy…”
Frequently, his little hand pulls the toothbrush out of his mouth mid-brush to append an additional descriptor to his song.
“You are my dump-truck and orange water bottle boy who wears big boy underpants, my precious dump-truck-and-orange-water-bottle boy who wears big boy underpants…”
And so on and so forth.