Wednesday, May 28, 2008

"Crinkler"

"Come here, Crinkler, time to get you cleaned up."

While this may seem like an odd phrase, it is frequently heard in our household. Yes, our daughter has incurred several nicknames during her short lifetime, one of the first and more appropriately dubbed being 'Crinkler'. This began way back when she was a newborn and while I would nurse her and read my Bible, she'd habitually reach back with her hand and methodically squeeze and unsqueeze the pages. Jordan recognized the trait and said, "Jaycee, you're just a Crinkler." She's been 'Crinkler' ever since. She literally has to be messing around with something all the time, if she happens to be found toyless in her carseat (inevitably because she 'crinkled' them all onto the floor), she crinkles her sun shade, her buckle, her headband, her shirt, or if all else fails, she can often be found twining her fingers in and out and slapping her hands together. It's chronic. When we put her in bed, accompanied with disappointed cries, even though she's so tired, she comforts herself by immediately reaching for the nearest blanket or toy and crinkles it. Her favorite, though is anything satin- she just rubs her hands up and down forlornly on the smoothness of her blanket until she falls asleep. It's cute, but it always causes me a little introspection as I watch this in my daughter. I here confess that my daughter gets it honestly from her mother;
I am a Crinkler.
While I don't bear the nickname, I fit into the category and now realize that my lifetime of rolling the sheets and rubbing them on my face when in bed, and jingling the keys, and shaking my leg whenever sitting, and countless other unconscious habits have been passed on to my daughter.

So, Crinkler she is, and while the nickname may not stick (I'm imagining a teenager loudly protesting at the ludicrousness of "Crinkler, time to eat"); she'll always remain a Crinkler, heretofore destined to worry her friends into slapping her legs still in church, annoy her husband as he's forced to hold conversations in the car over the sound of jangling keys, and pass on the genetic trait to her children.

But on to Jaycee's other nicknames: Crinkler goes pretty far back but not as far back as 'Sennacherib'. Yep, folks, I'm married to a chronic can't-call-anything-or-anyone-by-the-right-name man of my dreams. She (although we didn't know the gender yet) was dubbed Sennacherib in my womb by her affectionate father. He also tossed around the name 'option' of Kadesh Barnea, which is a desert near ancient Palestine. This is what happens when your husband is reading through the Old Testament during your pregnancy. While 'Sennacherib' can be heard on rare occasions in our household, Kadesh seems to hold its own. Just last night before picking her up I heard: "C'mere Kadesh". Now, I'm not at all opposed to nicknames and have come up with some for our daughter on my own, one of the first being "Beso", the spanish word for 'kiss'. But I think that sprung from "Jaycee Baycee", or just "Baycee" which got shortened to 'Beso', and is appropriate b/c she gets smothered in kisses and now knows how to give them back. Shortly after I began calling her 'Jaycee Baycee', Jordan piped in with 'Spacey Jaycee' which I immediately squelched b/c it sounds kind of mean. See, we do have some limits on this obsessive nicknaming. As her personality and life progressed, she continued to accumulate nicknames. Currently these are the most frequent:

Jayce- we knew this would probably happen and discussed it when choosing her name. We like it though and I think it's especially cute when her young aunts and uncles call her this

Jaycer

Jaycercise- this started the day after our sister-in-law was telling us about her Jazzercise workouts, classic, I know

Gucci

Schnikey or Schnikeys

Baby- b/c of the lack of originality or weirdnes, you guessed it, I call her this most frequently

Louise- when she's in trouble usually, and often used as a pseudo-middle name. I even sway to this usage; one time correcting her in front of our friends when she threw food off her tray saying "Jaycee Louise" in that parental tone of 'you're in trouble'. Jordan thoroughly endorses this usage saying, "We don't need to ruin her middle name by just using it when she's in trouble." her middle name is most obviously too precious to stain it with a disapproving tone. her middle name is Jordan

Girly- her A. KaraLea and U. David call her this the most, and she is pretty girly

Gumba- read "goom-bah"

Little Buddy- only used by her father, actually most of these are, but I never call her this, b/c in my family "Dolly" was for the girls and "Buddy" for the boys, especially my brother Caleb, whose widely used nickname is 'Buddy'. it sounds a bit masculine to me.

Dolly- that being said, I do call her this often

Dolly Llama- this nickname was born shortly after the Tibetan leader (correctly spelled Dalai Lama) was all over the news, and yes, it came from me, but I'm proud of that b/c the large percentage comes from Jordan

Diva- she only gets called this when she's sporting the 'my way or the highway' attitude, which thankfully isn't very often

Loco Grande- while it is Spanish, I did not dub her this, it was you-know-who

Goofball

Fish - usually accompanied with the article "a". "You're a fish" is often heard when she eats a lot. why? I don't know, go ask the nickname master.

Princess- but of course :)

Gucci has actually started looking at us weird when we call her 'Jaycee'. It's like she doesn't know what to do with it. She's so used to being called anything but... I don't even think she knows it's her real name.

No, I'm kidding, but truly, with all those other wonderful options, it's a wonder the word "Jaycee" ever gets spoken in our house. We don't need anymore over here, in fact the things Jordan and I get called is a subject for an altogether separate post, but feel free to tell me the nicknames that can be heard in your home. (G version, of course)

8 comments:

Luke said...

Wow...that's a LOT of nicknames. :-)

Heidi & I don't really use nicknames for each. I guess I use "babe" and "hon" a lot, but that's about it.

Anonymous said...

Well my favorite nickname given to me by my father (who still uses it) is Pixie or Pix. Which sometimes gets changed to Pixie Dust after tinkerbell. But I love it because my dad is the only one that uses it. There's something special about dads...

Traever Guingrich said...

andrea is otherwise known as: frail mcgail, spam-drea, suge t, sugar blossom, blimpy girl, fatty-boom-ba-latty, devil woman, dum-dum, fats, and a whole host of non-G-rated names which are used the most.
sorry we couldn't be there tuesday. i wound up spending two hours at lowe's before just going home and waiting for andrea to help me unload the van i borrowed from my uncle scott. i had a 10% coupon that expired so i tried to buy everything i would need for the rest of the summer.

the schros said...

this is the first time i've ever posted on my own blog. I don't really know the point in this, b/c i kind of figure people don't come back just to see if their comment has been replied to but...oh well.

Luke, when you get kids, the nicknames will increase
Erin, if I call you Pixie, will that rob the specialness of it?
Traever- I feel lied to. Mr. I'm-hanging-out-with-Jonny-Eb-b/c-he's-back-in-town
Jenae&Jackie-Comment!

Traever Guingrich said...

that was my plan but i took so long at lowe's i just went home. plus, i felt like crap because spamdrea gave me strep throat.

taryn said...

First of all, Happy Birthday to little Jaycee today. The big 01. Also, it's funny you mentioned "Kadesh" in your post.

Small side story, Kelly Kaiser (now Knobloch) and I used to hang out a lot when we were little and our favorite thing to do was "creative stuff." We would imagine up pretend towns, families, children, etc. Anyway, my "pretend last name" was Kadesh and we created this one Sunday at church in a Sunday School room while looking at a map. How funny is that.

Luckily we both grew out of that phase and are now living out our "real" lives. :)

Cute post.

Vanessa said...

So fun!! Schnikey is my favorite. I can remember so many nicknames my family, but mostly my dad gave me, so I'm sure she'll remember them forever! I'm still "Nessers" to my dad. In fact, I can't remember the last time he called me Vanessa!

Anonymous said...

Nicknames generally don't stick with me, but Gab calls me "Freebush" a lot. At first her and Bethany called me "KristiLou Freebush" (like "GracieLou Freebush" from Miss Congeniality). But then they shortened it to "Freebush" which seems to have stuck.