My four-year old boys love me like prepubescents experiencing their first crushes: wild, unadulterated, obsessive love, so fierce and fantastical it's almost embarrassing.

Both sons are caught in a full-on Oedipus complex, I know, I know. But do the boys have to be so starkly obvious about their feelings for me? After all, Freud's theories always seemed a bunch of patriarchal hooey, but I wonder, now, if my boys have his Complete Works tucked beneath their tractor-themed pillows, reminding them to fall in love with their mother.

These days, I receive countless marriage proposals from each. Something like: "I wish I married you before daddy did." Daddy, of course, is the great interloper, the man who sleeps next to me most nights.

Or I should say, most of the night. Because my boys cannot fall asleep in the same room, they take turns going to sleep in "mama's bed"—called this, even though it is clearly not mine alone. Each night, minutes before bedtime, the duel for mama's bed ensues: "Is it my turn mama's bed?" "He had mama's bed last night." "I'm sure it's my turn mama's bed." Once proper order is established, the winner runs off to my bedroom, triumphant; the loser slumps dejectedly to his room.

In mama's bed (the name itself seems freighted with unwanted metaphor), I read a book while the victorious son gazes at me adoringly, his mama-princess who enchants, even while turning pages. Despite having a king-sized bed, each son chooses to fall sleep pressed again me, holding my hand. Later, their dad peels them from me, putting them in their own bed, their blissful turn with mommy disappointingly over.

Freud, I think, would have a heyday with the symbolism of my husband's nightly intervention in the mama-bed drama.

Yet the drama continues, for during the day, my boys fight over who I should hold and who gets to sit behind me in the car (if I drive, one son is happy; if my husband drives, and I sit in the front seat, I've pleased the other son). They practice long, slow kisses, coming to me with lips puckered and eyes shut, much like that other guy who lives in our house. At dinner, they push their chairs suffocatingly close to mine, so that three of us sit tight on one side of the table. My husband sits alone on the other side.

The boys are true romantics, having learned—perhaps from SpongeBob; most definitely not from my husband—that women can be wooed with chocolate and flowers. When they receive chocolate, they always share, ceremoniously handing me a small piece squeezed in their sticky fingers, then waiting for acknowledgement of their great gift. Never mind that I had given them the chocolate to begin with.

Our yard has also been plucked free of dandelions, as the boys pick the weeds one by one, walking back and forth across the yard to deliver their presents, then insisting I display them in cups of water. For a short while, they also yanked my roses from their stems, bringing me buds mangled by their efforts. While I appreciated the sacrifice of pricked fingers, I stopped the practice so that my rose bushes might survive the summer.

It's nice, in a way, this mama adoration, Freud be damned. After all, I haven't received this kind of elaborate romantic attention since my husband first pursued me a decade ago, not with chocolate or flowers, but with long romantic letters and weekend getaways to the coast. And while my husband continues to charm me, I appreciate the rush of young love and the sense that, at least to two little boys, I am the most extraordinary creature in the world.

Still, Freud promises this loving attention will soon depart and that, at five, they will no longer find me the goddess I now seem. If they are consulting the books stashed under their pillows, both boys will learn they need to identify with their father, rather than be in love with me.

And so, I feel a small sadness that by sons' fifth birthday is looming. Hopefully, at least, my sons can become as their father, and can learn new ways to express their love to me, like their father does. That is, when he can get close enough.

Melanie Springer Mock is the mother of two four-year-old boys, Benjamin and Samuel. She is also an associate professor of writing and literature at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. Her reviews and essays have appeared in places such as Brain, Child, The Imperfect Parent, and Mennonite Weekly Review; her book, Writing Peace, was published by Cascadia in 2003.