By any other name

Oliver: "Mom, why do moms and dads not have whole names?"
Me: "What do you mean, Oliver?"
Oliver: "Like, why don't you and daddy have a whole name?"
Me: "What's your whole name?"
Oliver: "Oliver."

Thinking I have clarified the question, I respond.

Me: "Mommy and daddy do have whole names.  Daddy's is Wesley.  Mine is Elizabeth.  But we go by Wes and Liz.  You and Emme calls us mom and dad because we're your mom and dad."
Oliver: "But mom is only three letters, and Oliver is more than that."

Aha.  I see.

For Emme's second birthday

Nine months old

The rodent

The rodent

Everywhere I go shopping for clothes for Emme, I see little pink onesies, often with rhinestones, that proclaim, "Daddy's little princess."  So it kind of surprised me when Wes landed on his most recent nickname for Emme -- the rodent.  Oliver has also now picked it up.  I'm not sure he realizes that it's being used to refer to Emme or if he even knows what a rodent is.  But he thinks it's funny nonetheless.  I do not.  My usual nickname for her is "Sweety Pea."

I mean, I do kind of see where he's coming from.  Emme's scampering little crawl and the fact that she gets around like crazy are a little rodent-esque.  She is constantly underfoot these days, especially since she's started trying to pull herself up on my legs when she wants me (adorable, unless you're trying to put groceries away -- or, as was the case this morning, use the bathroom).  She's starting to get into things.  Today we had to take my power cord away from her lest she pull the whole laptop on her head.  I guess we might be Oliver-proofed but are not really baby proofed in some spots.

Wes insists that this nickname is meant as a compliment.  Rodents are survivors, he claims, especially the ones that periodically visit our home and manage to avoid the traps we put down for them (the poison, it seems, is another story).  I just don't know, though, that Emme is going to look back as a young woman (by which time Wes will hopefully have thought of another nickname -- Emme-Em is the usual referent) and think to herself -- My dad sure must have loved me when I was a baby, comparing me to vermin and all.

Would make for an interesting onesie, though.  Even with rhinestones.  

Dear Husband, Part 46

Wes has named the fetus: G2.

Nicknames

For posterity -- Oliver's nicknames include:

• Ollie, for short
• Little Guy (what Wes called him from birth), which got abbreviated LG (not dissimilar to Lucy becoming LTD, as in Lucy the Dog), which got further shorted to G, which is a term my students use with each other as an urban slang term ("Wassup, G?"). Hence, it amuses them to no end to hear me call Oliver "G."
• Little Baby Oliver, a term coined by my older brother and sister-in-law in referencing the forthcoming baby to their own two sons. This was abbreviated LBO at Christmas, then shortened by brother-in-law (don't you think you're funny?) to BO.

One of my colleagues says Oliver has to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Evidently Oliver Anderson Self sounds something like Oliver Wendell Holmes. If I put my lawyer bias aside, I can go with that.