…is Ian’s latest nickname. Partly because he now prefers to play while we’re sleeping, but mostly because when we accuse him of this in the morning, he giggles and grins, and forces me to smile. Stinker.
His first official nickname was Professor Fussenberg. We’d only use this when he was unjustly (we felt) cranky. Full stomach, clean diaper, and a goofy face – what more could he want?! My mother-in-law once threatened to call him ‘Ippy’ when he was like this. It’s not much of a threat when you’re two months old, but he’d better behave himself when he brings home his first girlfriend. His mother assures me that your average thirty-year-old knows how to behave himself.
From day one I began calling him ‘buddy’. ‘Hey, buddy!’ ‘Aw, what’s wrong, buddy?’ ‘How ‘ya doin’ buddy?’ I started to feel like a bad Kramer impersonater, so I stopped. Kelly calls him ‘Eener Beaner’, which is fairly self-explanatory, and my father-in-law calls him ‘dude’.
Why do we even bother giving our children proper names?