Naturally, 'Muffy' is short for 'Fluffy'

Quick update: Martina is still funny. (To me, I should emphasize).

After 2 weeks of not visiting because of a weird viral rash (on her, not me), Martina spent most of today at our house. She was falling asleep while chewing her lunch so we all decided to 'nap' after eating. Thankfully, napping meant another chance for a quick naptime story. As always, I let her provide the plot and characters' names before I supplied the details. She requested a story about one little pig. A few seconds later, she changed her mind and bargained for two little pigs. I allowed it. Anything but three.

So the first pig's name was Fluffy. And his nickname was … Muffy.

(Apparently, Fluffy was his Christianized baptismal name. Who doesn't know St Fluffy of Naples?)

The younger pig's name was Shoeshine, named after a dog Martina saw on TV. Shoeshine's nickname was, however, 100% Martina-generated. Shoeshine's nickname was … place your bets now …  Sootine.

(It's pronounced SOO-tayn of course, because SOO-tin just doesn't make sense. And we're all about sense here.)

It was at that point that I missed Sparkly Neever.

Martina was already quite sleepy when I began telling the story of how Muffy was assigned by his mother to be in charge of Sootine. As expected, my tiny niece fell asleep while I was still in the middle of adding levels of personality to my characters (pigs can be multifaceted in my stories). Not one to put a plot to waste, I continued to tell my tale just in case Martina wasn't fully asleep yet. For the curious: Muffy and Sootine had a wonderful time 'camping' in their pink tent (male pigs are accepting of all colors) and 'fishing' and 'cooking' by the 'river'. I don't know how those 'details' were 'relevant'.

Oh and there was no evil wolf, no huffing or puffing, and no crazy straw houses in today's story. That stuff is reserved for stories of the three-pig variety. It must be noted that Juancho beat me to the three-pig story a few weeks ago when he provided our naptime story. I was quite riveted by a few things:

1. Embarrassingly enough, I had forgotten most of the story so I was genuinely interested.
2. Juancho is a great storyteller. I was holding back tears when I thought about how I used to tell him stories when he was too young to know I was messing with his head.

All in all, I was extremely grateful for today. Martina will soon be too big for my stories and Juancho might have already outgrown my imagination (I had to threaten him to nap with us that three-pig day). I miss my little playmates already (Martina and Juancho, not the pigs).

I'm not going to cry. I am NOT going to cry.

Taken about 4 years ago. Edited for nostalgia today.

WAAAAAHHHH!!! *sniff* Hold me, Muffy.