Nicknames

I've noticed that many bloggers use cute nicknames to refer to their kids on their blog - Little Miss, Mr. Wee, Boo, etc. It got me thinking that maybe I'm falling behind the blogger times using the simple K and L to refer to my own two blessings. Trying to get past the boring, mundane initials, I started trying to come up with new nicknames for the girls. Well, L is easy as I can simply call her Ellie Mae which I sometimes do in the real world, but K is harder. We sometimes shorten her name (which is what we had originally planned to call her) and I call both the girls Honey (mostly because I can't remember which name belongs with which kid half the time), but she has no cute nickname all her own.

It's partly her own fault as she doesn't like people to shorten her name. This shouldn't surprise me as she is at least generation #3 in a family that *does not* use nicknames. We go by full names regardless of number of syllables or how close the relationship, thankyouverymuch. There is only one person in my mom's family who was not called by her full name, but she has a rather interesting story. You see, she was never given a name; she was simply called Sis. When she went to school, she was embarrassed to tell her teacher that her name was Sis, so she made up a name and eventually had that name put on her birth certificate to replace the "Baby Girl" that was her official name. In the family, though, Sis stuck and my mom knew her as "Aunt Sis".

And then there's the other side of my family that *only* used nicknames. I grew up with Peanut, Scooter, and BooBoo, only learning their real names when I saw them again in high school (except Peanut, I still don't know his real name). I sat across from a guy at lunch for months before I found out his last name, figured out he had to be related, and discovered that he was that kid BooBoo from long ago (he swore me to secrecy). You gotta love small towns where you're always running into friends and long forgotten family members.

So I shall have to put my thinking cap on and figure out an appropriate blog nickname for K. Maybe I'll even ask for her input.