A NOTE ON NICKNAMES

James has acquired quite a few nicknames over the past year...

We call him Stinkerdoodle, Buddy, Bub Bubs, Pumpkin Sauce (don't ask - that one's all Jay), Munchkin, Munchkin Man, Mister Man, Little Man, Wild Man, Handsome (that one's just me), Sweet Baby, Sweet Baby James, Baby, Baby Boy, Big Boy, Sweet Boy, Twinkle Toes (because he still stands on his tip-toes a lot of the time), Toe Biter (because not only does he bite/suck on his own toes, but he thinks it's hilarious to bite our toes), Chucklehead (when he's being really goofy, or he's "full of crazy", as we like to say), etc. (yup, the list goes on, but I'll spare you). Sometimes we even call him Cuatro. However, we mostly just call him by name: James, or James Henry. In the beginning we actually had to make quite an effort to do this, but we've done it since he was a newborn because we really wanted him to learn his name without us confusing him. Since he started responding to his name so early on, the nicknames have just grown exponentially, and are used more and more often. And "James Henry" is reserved more and more these days for times when he's getting into trouble...

My mom calls him Punkerdoodle (as you already know), or sometimes Prince James. Jay's mom still calls him Tadpole. And his daycare provider calls him Jamesy. That's a LOT of nicknames for one little boy! And all these nicknames for James got me thinking (as did a recent email from my mom) - what will we call Cora? Mom and I have thrown around a few ideas, but nothing sounds right. We know what we don't want though: I'll state for the record here and now that she will NOT be called "Cori". Just as we asked everyone to never call James "Jimmy" or "Jim", and you have all complied (thank you for that), we hope you will also trust us about "Cori". Now, as for what we WILL want her to be called, I think we'll just have to wait until we meet her. She'll likely be Cora or Cora Mae only around our house for quite a while though, so we can teach her her given name without confusion, just as we did for James. Although, I admit (and you may have noticed from previous blog posts), I do already call her Baby Girl and Miss Cora quite often...