Middle Name Literalism

Ane is slowly learning how to write her own name. She has all the letters down – it’s getting them in the right order that’s the problem. Her real name has just a few more letters than her blog one.

Yesterday, I took Ane over to my parents’ house after we dropped Tad off at school. With Grandma still recuperating from hip replacement surgery, Christmas decorating has been harder than usual, shall we say. I’ve been going over to help decorate – because Ressis and the girls will be here in a week! So yesterday I hung all the stockings while Ane carefully “read” each one – meaning that once she could decipher Grandma’s fancy cursive stitching to read the first letter, she could guess whose stocking it was.

Later, we got into a discussion about names, which led to middle names. I asked her if she knew what the Webmaster’s middle name was, and then pointed out that it’s also Tad’s first name. She and I share a middle name with Obachan. Ane then started asking about her cousins. In our family, we seem to use family names for middle names.

Tad and the Captain share a middle name. Little Cousin’s middle name is Grandma’s first name. Baby Cousin’s middle name is the same as Great-Grandma’s. Belle’s middle name is the same as Q-Bee’s (which is Q-Bee’s grandmother’s first name). The problem was explaining Berry’s middle name to Ane.

“What’s baby Berry’s middle name?” she asked, after having covered all the other cousins. Berry is the youngest, after all.

“Berry’s middle name is Kaye,” I said.

Ane stared at me. “No, what’s her middle name,” she asked again.

“Kaye,” I answered, slowly realizing that I was going to have a problem in the next three seconds.

Clearly miffed, Ane said, “MOM! What’s Berry’s middle name?!”

“Honey, it’s Kaye. It’s spelled K-A-Y-E. I know it sounds like the letter ‘K’, but it is a real name. She has the same middle name as her Aunt May-Bay, Aunt Q-Bee’s sister.”

Ane sighed loudly. “When you remember what her middle name is, you can tell me.” She walked off.

Why do I even try explaining things to an almost-five year old literalist?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 1:23 am and is filed under Children, Family.
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