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Of chinny-chin-chins and armies
"I think we should start using appropriate, anatomical names for Baby J's body parts," I told Freckles as we drove home from San Francisco on Sunday afternoon. (And yes, I actually talk like that.)
What I had in mind involved a slightly disturbing instance over the weekend in which Freckles had informed Baby J that he "had poo-poo on your pee-pee."
Freckles was quiet for a minute.
"You mean, like we shouldn't call his arms his 'armies,' or his chin his 'chinny-chin-chin,' or his cheeks his 'sheekies?'"
Damn.
Those were all terms I used on a daily basis. Oops. Way to be a hypocrite, I thought to myself.
"Exactly," I said, at this point actually starting to giggle, "and we should probably stop calling his mouth 'Mr. Mouthie.'"
(I don't know where that came from -- it just seems to have a mind of its own sometimes, and feels like it should have a title that sets it apart from the rest of him. Just last week, while we were watching television, Baby J suddenly shrieked in delight, opened Mr. Mouthie wide and lunged his gums into my arm. At the time, I thought it was absolutely hysterical and decided -- logically -- to call it eating "arm on the cob." But, actually, that one should probably go as well, if we're being anatomically correct.)
But it wasn't my demented names for things I had a problem with, after all, and so I kept going in attack of Freckles' actually relatively rational misnomer.
"And," I said, as if it might be an afterthought, "we should tell him that it's a penis, not a pee-pee."
"Okay," said Freckles, ever the diplomat, "but why?"
Unfortunately, for the sake of reasoned debate, at that point I was too busy convulsing in laughter from imagining Mr. Mouthie eating arm on the cob to answer.

