Name My Children

In December my sister calls me one Saturday and says what with calling your daughter "the girl" [in my blog]. I don't like it. I explained my reasons for not using my children's names mostly stemming around privacy and anonymity for them. She argued that then I should not have a public blog. Devil's advocate!

I didn't like the suggestion of an initial for their name. That just didn't appeal. We both liked the idea of an alias or nickname for each one. So for my daughter, I've decided to refer to her as Mimi (me-me). This is a love handle that I sometimes use for her. I'm not sure about the boys. I do call my youngest T-Bone or T-Man and may do that in the blog. Now the oldest has had several love handles over the years as well.

My favorite is a bit too childish for his age now and another is a derivative of his given name so I don't feel comfortable using that. We do sometimes call him Dugger (do-ger). A nickname that I borrowed from one of my second cousins. When he was in Costa Rica one of the chaperons called him Angus like Angus Young from AC/DC. I don't have the exact story as to why or how he got this name. Maybe because he could sing all their songs. Although I've never heard him sing any songs. I don't know what I'll call him. We'll all have to wait and see what evolves.

Our music teacher used the "term" love handle after teaching my students the song "You are my sunshine". She explained that the child in the song is not named Sunshine but this is how the child makes the songwriter feel. Therefore Sunshine is an affectionate nickname or "love handle". The students then shared love handles that their parents use for them and we made new verses of the song. For example, You are my honey, my only honey you make me happy when skies are gray...

I like the expression love handle especially since my children don't have nicknames. We call them by their given names (their birth certificate name). I feel very strong about the fact that my children would be called by the name they were given. If we wanted to call the Susie the we'd name them that not Susan. Of course the boys have somehow gotten their friends and even some of their teachers to call them by a nickname, a shortened version of their name.