For some reason, Jason and I seem incapable of using our children’s given names.     It just seems like we are completely incapable of sticking to the names on the birth certificate.   Sooooo boring.

A selection of the names and a brief history:

Genevieve:

1) G: This is the original.   Genevieve is, of course, a long name, hard for a little girl to pronounce, and harder for a pissed off, scared, or tired parent to say 10 times quickly when trying to keep a little girl from eating dirt/sticking her hands in the dog’s mouth/pulling down a display in the store/running out in front of a car/blah blah blah.   So out of necessity and/or laziness, Genevieve became G.   This was my attempt to keep her from becoming Jen or Jenny or something girly that she will have to live with waaay past when it’s cute.     I thought we would stop calling her G pretty quickly as she grew up, but that appears totally wrong….she may end up saddled with G as a name….oh well, at least it’s not Jenny.

2) T.Human: Arrived on the scene at approximately the same time as G.   Jason’s name for Genevieve, very appropriate for little helpless baby that (we were assured) would eventually grow into full-sized human.   We weren’t so sure, but used the name anyway.   Phased out at approximately the same time as we adopted #3.

3)   Monster: Arrived on the scene at approximately 1 year, when she had earned it for obvious reasons (if you know her) .   At the time, was cute as she was tiny and cute so monster had some ironic cuteness to it.   As she grows into it, however, it becomes more eerily appropriate and not-so-cute.

Despite the relative briefness of our association with her, we have developed even more names for Alana.

1)   Meatpod: Resulting from Jason’s observation that she seems to do very little other than lie there, eat, sleep, poop, and gain weight.   In truth, she does somewhat resemble what one might think a meatpod would look like.   Shortens nicely to “pod”

2) Snort:   My name for Alana, thanks to her somewhat unsettling style of breathing.   She is quite loud in her inhalations and exhalations, particularly when excited.

3)   Monster Jr.:   She hasn’t really earned this one yet, but we have already trotted it out.

4)   Trucker Jr., or “Trucker”: Second kids really get no love.   See explanation here. Thunk.

Thanks to her relatively short name, we have avoided butchering Alana’s given name (so far).   So no, we are not calling her “A”.

And of course, we don’t stop there:

Kila, aka “Rocket”, Jo was mostly “Jo”, sometimes “Evil Jo”.   Other pets avoided the curse:   Tsaina was always just “Tsaina”,   and Turtle is “Turtle”.   Our other many various and assorted miscellaneous cats never earned nicknames beyond Slim (also “Evil Slim”).

For some reason, we don’t have nicknames for each other (that I know about…).