Mind your Manners

I've been working hard to prevent BigM from responding to everything I say to her with "huh?" (I know she must have learned it somewhere [slowly raising guilty hand? surely she didn't get that from me!] but it seriously drives me bananas.) Lately, she has been doing a wonderful job of saying, "M'am" or "Sir" appropriately- even to LM, which kind of makes me laugh a little bit.

I'm really proud of her for using such good manners and it reminds me of a funny story from when she was little.

Around 18 months, BigM discovered that people in her family actually have real names, other than: Mommy, Daddy, Lolli, Pop, Sassy, G-Pops... you get the idea. She started calling her father by his first name rather than what we began to refer to as "his special name" (aka Daddy.)

We were driving in the car one afternoon and she said something like, "Where's Daddy Mouse?" and I said, "Sweetie, remember you need to use his special name. Daddy Mouse is his real name, but you need to call him Daddy because you are the only person who can call him that." (LM had yet to be born.) She pondered that thought for a minute and started rattling off everyone's real name and their special names, except mine. So I asked her about it, "Mommy is my special name, do you know my real name?"

Without missing a beat, she matter-of-factly said, "M'am."

That's right, Sweet Pea, that's right.