"Honey, Hun, Baby, Babe, Bebe, Sweety!"

One of the facts that I've come to terms with in my life is that Maddox pretty much owns me. When he waltzes into my room at 5:30 in the morning, he pretty much controls what happens from that point forward. We're either snuggling together for an hour or two and sleeping (this is ideal.) Or, he's yanking my half dorment corpse out of bed and we're having oatmeal time and Elmo (this scenario is much more common.) He comes up with new ways to get my attention, and ultimately get his way. The newest way of doing this began this weekend. We had quite a bit going on around our house. The NFL Playoffs, Maddox's new learning video game that he got from his grandpa, cleaning up Christmas decorations, playing volleyball in our living room with a giant beach ball we found in the closet (this was an epic game of v-ball), watching "Cars" a time or 4, among other things. So as you can imagine cleaning up the house wasn't too easy with a little dude that was giving me the full court press all weekend. It was one of those weekends where when he laid down to sleep I literally collapsed on the couch ready for a break. So by Sunday night I was feeling quite discouraged with the mess of dishes in the sink, the kitchen that needed cleaning, laundry, and other things I needed to do. I decided to let him play with some toys for a bit while I tried making my move to get some stuff done. A few minutes later Maddox came to me to play baseball (our version of baseball is him standing on one end of the living room and pitching it to me on the other end. Once in a while the throws in "A DEEP FLY BALL!!!!" By chucking a ball almost to the ceiling and making me run after it. That's how we play baseball.) I told him that daddy needed a few minutes to finish some stuff and then I'd be happy to come and play with him. But since he's got the patience of a bank robber he persisted. I kept coming back with, "in just a minute buddy, daddy is busy right now." That didn't cut it either, so he decided to bust out the big guns. He came back a few minutes later, "Please! Honey, hun, baby, babe, bebe, sweety..." and probably a few others. By the time he got to sweety I lost it, I'd tapped out. He used everything his mother or I have called him, he got all affectionate on me to get his way. I immediately dropped what I was doing and played some baseball. I thought this was a funny, one time thing. Until I put him in bed and we finished our reading, praying, and singing a song while I tickle his back routine. As I walked out of his room he yelled after me, "Daddy!! Daddy!!" When I kept walking he yelled, "Honey, hun, BABE!!!!" I had to go in and sing one more song at that point. It's not often that someone calls me "honey," except for waitresses over the age of 50 at local dining establishments. But I'd rather hear that from him than anyone. Maybe the affect of that will wear off eventually, but if not I guess I'll get a call from him when he's in college, "dad can you send me some money," and when I give any resistence he'll come back with, "honey, hun, baby, bebe, please...." Either way at least I've come to terms with the fact that he runs the show.