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Cutie pie, honey bunch

Our baby goes by many names. From her first day on this planet a variety of nicknames for her have popped into my head, as I'm changing her diaper, rocking her to sleep, playing, or interacting in any way. At first, I marveled at how I could come up with these. I have never been one to use nicknames - I am usually the one person in the group who calls our friend by his given first name, instead of nicknames which include but are not limited to A-bomb, Cub, and Nancy. So it was atypical of me to go overboard with nicknames for our little one, but for some reason I couldn't help myself. I thought the names I used were unique and adorable.

Some of my most-used nicknames:

  • sweet pea (obviously this one has stuck)

  • peanut

  • little bug

  • little beetle

  • little miss

  • babycakes

  • sweetie pie

  • a variety of rhyming names


Then one day I was at a popular children's clothing store, and saw a rack of onesies with cute nicknames on the front and was crushed by the realization that almost none of my nicknames were actually unique. In fact, they were so well-used that clothing designers could put them on baby clothes knowing that customers would recognize and identify them as standard baby nicknames. You, reader, probably looked at my list and knew this was coming, right? Oh well. I must have somehow absorbed these names subconsciously and produced them naturally when faced with my own tiny baby. So the question I have now is, how much of what I do and say as a parent comes directly from my experiences as a child myself and from observing other parents? Possibly all of it. But maybe that's not such a bad thing.

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