Name Calling

Eric has been home a lot more in the past few days than usual. No, I'm not complaining about that, just prefacing my story with it. He's actually been home sick, so it hasn't been as fun as it sounds. Anyway, yesterday I was playing with Emma and tickling her foot with some of my hair, and she was giggling really cute. Sometimes when Eric or I wrestle with Emma or gang up on her etc. as we play, she'll call out to the other one for help (help mommy or help daddy). So, as I was playing with Emma, I turned to Eric and said, "Hey Eric, look." He looked, and then Emma started saying, "Eric help, Eric help." Well, a more phoenetically correct spelling would be "airwick help, airwick help." I've never heard her call him Eric before. I know that all kids eventually learn that mom and dad have other names, and maybe most learn this before Emma did, but it was so funny. I realized that I'm not very good at refering to Eric as "daddy." I only do it when I'm talking to Emma about him. If I'm just saying something to him, whether Emma's in the room or not, I call him Eric. I've discovered that I'm not as careful around Emma with what I say as I should be anyway. Don't worry, she's not swearing or anything (and I'm not either...usually), but she'll also use words like "butt" instead of "bum"... you get the idea. I'm always impressed with the parenting skills of my friends and family, and how guarded and disciplined they are. Maybe it's not a matter of discipline, but just a matter of them really being that good (except for a couple of you... you know who you are). Wow. I guess I need to work on it some more.