The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

Well, a few weeks ago, I had a flashback to That Guy -- and it came from my 4-year-old daughter.

We were at a birthday party in Illinois, having traveled out of town for the weekend to stay with my in-laws. My Isabel had too much to eat -- cake and chips and fruit snacks and ice cream -- and too much fun to handle. Shortly after 8 o’clock, she got a little tipsy on all the activity. I hoisted her onto the kitchen counter for a juice break.

Her hair was sweaty from running around with her cousins. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying (she had just fallen and skinned her knee). Her eyelids were heavy. Her dress was wrinkled. She knew that we’d be leaving her cousins and grandparents the next day, and she started to get weepy because she’d miss them. And then she looked at me -- you know, like That Guy always looked at you.

"You know," she slurred, "you know I love you, Mommy. I love your hair. I love your face. I love you so much."

I giggled and handed her a juice box. She missed her mouth with the straw a few times, poking herself in the cheek, on the chin. She finally managed a sip, and then set the box heavily back on the counter.

She sighed dramatically then, and listed over a little. I straightened her up.

"I know you miss them," I told her, placating her as I wiped her little mouth with a "Pirates of the Caribbean" napkin.

"Yeah, I really, really do," she said, her eyes glazing over; she was so tired. "I just love everybody so much. Everybody … so much …"

My husband came over then, and I told him Isabel was drunk on sugar and reminding me of drunk guys at bars. I don’t think he got the comparison. He looked at me like I was a little nuts, and then like he’d rather not think about drunk guys hitting on me at bars. So that was nice. (Sometimes we wives have to remind our husbands who we used to be: "Back in the day, hubby o’ mine, plenty a plastered guy had so much to drink that he started to believe I was his ideal woman, so there, consider yourself lucky, um, yeah.")

Anyway, the episode made me laugh -- and I still chuckle when I think about it now. I love that my children are so in tune with their emotions. The difference between That Guy and my 4-year-old daughter? (Well, aside from the obvious differences, of course): My 4-year-old doesn’t need the help of certain substances to express herself. She opens her heart to me a dozen times a day.

"I love you all the way to the stars!" she tells me at night. "I need my morning hug," she exclaims every morning. "I missed you so much!" she tells me when I pick her up from school. Her little friends are the same way. There’s one little girl who runs up to me every afternoon. "My mommy’s picking me up, too!" she tells me, so excited. "I love my mommy SO MUCH!"

Our children love us SO MUCH. We’re their entire worlds. I am her sun and her moon, her best friend, her protector, her hero. I lift her over puddles and into the bathtub. I push in her chair and fill the plate in front of her. I kiss her hurts and do my best to explain to her the wonders of our world.

I’m the one she wants to sit next to in restaurants, on the couch, at the dinner table. I’m the one she runs to when she’s discovered something magical or learned something new. "Mommy! I’m not comfortable!" she’ll yell downstairs some nights. For her, I am the only person in the world who can make her comfortable again. I am the one who will fix it. To her, I am the one who can fix everything.

I am her everything, and she tells me so every day.

I know she’ll grow up and outgrow all kinds of stuff. My 6-year-old used to run top-speed down our hallway every morning, and I had to catch her and lift her into the air. This was our morning ritual. She outgrew it a few months back, realizing that mornings aren’t for leaping, they’re for groaning and yawning. Isabel just learned how to say her "L" sound -- leaving behind the last remnant of her baby days. I’m a little bummed, I admit it. I loved the way she "wuved" me.

Surely their admiration for me won’t last either. I’ll lose my place at the top of their worlds. And that’s expected, that’s healthy, that’s OK.

But I hope my daughters never outgrow their enthusiasm for their own emotions. The way they skip from sad to happy to absolutely overjoyed. The way they wear their hearts on their sleeves, their feelings on their little faces. The way they just love everybody … so much.

Oh, to be as open with our emotions as our children (and the drunk guy at the bar).

- Elizabeth

Suggest a topic for Mommy Talk. Write to elizabeth.young@lee.net