If you give Sam a choice between playing with dolls or playing with stuffed animals, the stuffed animals will win every time.
She's always been like this. She'll play with dolls for a few minutes, but mostly she just rips their clothes off, pretends they cry, rocks them, them drops them like rocks on the floor and moves on to a lion or a bear or a frog.
She's only recently started to understand what I mean when I say that she can be the mommy to her stuffed animals. Before, if she was pretending one of her stuffed animals got hurt -- say, for example, the green rubber frog gets eaten by a blue dinosaur who's feeling especially mean today -- she would bring it to me and say, "Mommy, the frog has a boo-boo on his leg. Can you kiss it?"
I tried telling her that she should be the mommy and kiss the frog's boo-boo, but that suggestion was usually greeted with a dubious look and a rubber frog still stuffed in my face.
But she's finally getting it. In the last few weeks, she's started telling me to call her "Baby Lion's Mommy." (He's in the picture attached to the "Big Sister Sam" entry.) Baby Lion is her all-time favorite, must-have-at-bedtime-with-the-blankie stuffed animal. He's pretty cute, despite the matted hair and the stitches I had to put into his tail when Sam hacked at him with scissors.
Last weekend, we were at the playground, and I was chatting with one of the other mothers. She told me Sam was so cute (which I never mind hearing) and asked how old she is. Then she called to Sam: "What's your name?"
Sam, without missing a beat, said: "Baby Lion's Mommy."
The other mother looked at me. "What's her name?"
I nearly smacked myself in the forehead. "Her name is Samantha. She's just being silly."
I tried to move on, but the other mom kept asking questions until I'd explained it. Thankfully, she smiled in understanding: She's got a 6-year-old daughter.
Have your kids ever made up their own nicknames or asked to be called by a different name? What did they pick?
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