It's Friday, the end of a long work week, so I thought I'd write an easy playful post. You know, as opposed to my usual hard hitting posts such as me overflowing a toilet, going on a cruise or a poorly drawn comic strip based on my dog.
I started thinking about this recently, how do you decide what the kids will call their grandparents? There are so many variations on the names. I've heard gramps, grammy, nanny, oma, nonnie, gi-gi, grandma family name. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head without even searching onlilne.
Growning up for me it was easy. I was a 2nd child, so my grandparents already had their names. They were Grandma Bessie & Papa Bill on my mom's side and Grandma Upstairs (she lived upstairs from us in a 3 story unit in Brooklyn) & Pop-Pop on my dad's side.
The naming convention can be different even within family trees. Allison and her brother call their grandparents Grandma and Grandpa, but their cousins call them Nana and Baba. They are the same people. How many names must they learn to answer to? It's crazy.
My niece calls my parents Papa and Bets. You'd think they would stick and we'd use those names too, but there is such a geographical distance, we can think of our own names for them. Normally I follow the school of thought "you can't give yourself a nickname" but I think I can make an exception in this case. I say let the grandparents pick their own names, but give parents (Allison and I) veto power.
Hy has already selected Poppy. We tested it out a few years ago, way before Allison was pregnant while we were living with them during construction of our house. I'm not sure what Ellen has decided upon, except that I don't think she wants Nana. For my parents I'd like to see my dad called Papa (or Pop-Pop,) but I'm leaning more towards Papa. My mother, I am so used to having grandma as a nickname for my grandma, I can't see any other name but that.
I'll keep you posted on it and who knows...Baby C might come up with his own nicknames for them. What do you guys call your grandparents?
3 comments:
Good question. My mom visits regularly so she got dibs on grandma first. My step-mom is grandma Susie, which she seems to dislike, but I didn't want to confuse the kid as he's only seen her once. Like you said, you can't choose your own nickname! My dad is the only grandpa. Steven's parents have taken the British names of Nana and Grand-dad, which made things easy.
Keep us updated on what everyone comes up with :)
My brother and I called my mother's parents, Nani & Papa. I believe my dad's mom was called Grandma.
thanks for the comments guys.
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