This morning, Cai, the eldest of my twin two-year-old toddlers, was adorable.

He was playing with a toy bulldozer. A scooper. Or, as he calls it, a “‘cooper.”

See? Isn’t that adorable already?

Yeah, I know our kids are mostly adorable to just us and not so much to other people. Given Cai’s ongoing proclivity to drool, I can intellectually understand that “‘cooper” doesn’t ameliorate the effects of perpetually damp shirts on your perception of his cuteness.

But who the heck cares what other people think about drool when your tiny, bedeviling kid looks up at you with big blue eyes and says, as Cai did, “Mommy, I’m going to ‘coop you up.”

Oh, the way my heart flipped and flopped. How precious that my son wants to ‘coop me up! What a tender moment.

And, as I reached down to hug His Royal Dampness, he followed up his comment with,

“Because you’re dirt.”