That's Not My Name

Some days I am not sure why I bothered to name my children.

In our family we use nicknames.  A lot.

We made a list last night and my daughter wins.  We realized that she has about 20 nicknames that we use for her, depending on the situation.

Most of the nicknames have nothing at all to do with her name.  We most commonly refer to her as Lulu.  From Lulu, there are many variations.  There is Lew, Lewis, Lewbert Q. Jones, Lou Bamboo and Lewis Bamboo-iss.

When she is particularly clumsy, she  is Mary-Katherine Gallagher.  When she gets out of the tub, she puts her hair in a towel wrap and calls herself Tiny Punjab.( I assure you , this is purely innocent and named after a character from Annie, a movie we love)  Her brother calls her Mavis-Bavis when she's being difficult and Little Mommy when she's being ..well, a little mommy.

 My son's nicknames are mostly name related.  for those of you who know him, we add "attack" and "a-roni and cheese" to his name.  I also call him Doodle, which I think he's starting to feel like he's outgrown.

When I was pregnant, we called my son Yolkie, we called my daughter Wormie.  We all have code names too.  Most of the names are from old movies.  My husband is Chappy Sinclair, I am Fanny Skeffington, my son is Boots Malone and my daughter is Sassafrass Jones.

It's so funny to me that we use these names all the time, it's just normal for us.  Sometimes when we're out and about, a nickname slips out and it's so funny to see people react.  I once I called my daughter Lewie at a soccer game and people assumed her name was Louise.  After telling them her real name, I got that look, its just to hard to explain.

There's an ice cream place in town called "Swirls and Scoops" and my husband and daughter always joke that it's called "Scoops and Poops" which has now somehow become the name of their detective team with my husband taking the name Scoops and leaving my daughter to be Poops.  They think it's hilarious. 

 I come from a family of nicknamers.  My dad hasn't called my mom by her real name in years, we used to call my sister "Bean" and even my dog had nicknames.  My husband used to make up nicknames for himself (which is where I think my daughter gets it, they are so alike!)  I've heard stories of him telling his family that they were to call him "Sonny" from now on after watching a Burt Reynolds movie and I believe he also gave himself the name Kid Celsius. 

I hope my kids will continue to love their nicknames and I am keeping the list we made so that someday I can look back and see what a bunch of goofballs we were.