Pet names

Ani and Reni have always had their own secret language, full of "wee-wee's!!" that elicit fits of giggles, wrestling and talking in gibberish that is their own secret code. They break it out when their parents are arguing, or when they're bored, when they're in overtired over-mode, or when they get hit with a case of the sillies.

When we moved to Miami, the kids didn't speak a lick of Spanish, but they heard it all around them --on the radio, the playground, their classrooms, the supermarket. Naturally, Spanish-sounding gibberish entered the made-up lexicon. And naturally, they re-named Roman "Horatio." But you must roll the "r" and now it has been shortened to "Or." Reni will correct you if you can't roll your R properly.

Roman, now quite verbal on his own, has happily joined their clan. He seems to implicitly understand that his siblings have their own language, and he happily chatters along with them in words he knows he's making up. I hadn't realized the extent of this until about a month ago when he started using this word, "guttie," and I couldn't understand what on earth it meant. He would say it all the time, quite clearly, and often demand "guttie" and get really upset when I couldn't find it. He even started asking me, "where's guttie?" It dawned on me one morning when dropping off the kids at school that he was actually referring to Anika, because as she exited the car he wailed, "No, Guttie! No! I want Guttie!"

He knows her real name. He knows Guttie is made up, because he laughs heartily when I say it. But he insists that her name is Guttie. And Reni? His name is, naturally, Wee-wee. They all run around the house calling each other by their pet names. I. Cannot. Stop. Laughing.

The other thing Roman runs around yelling, besides these nicknames, is the adorable-sounding "sicker-bowl," which he says when he sees a ball, or wants the ball, or sees a soccer match on TV. He is in LOVE with the sport, and always watching the kids outside on the soccer field and mesmerized by the players on TV. I walked him to the pool this morning, and on the way we met a neighbor boy who was dribbling a basketball as he walked along the sidewalk. Roman was super excited. The boy, about nine, let him hold the ball and Roman immediately tried to dribble it as he'd seen the boy do. He was pretty darn pleased with himself.