This is the person I refer to here as Baby:
But it’s clear that she’s just not a baby anymore. She’s a toddler, sometimes even a little girl. Look at her, comfortable in her chair, eating an apple all by herself, saying “cheese” for the camera. That’s just not very infantile.
In Real Life she goes by “Baby N__a.” New acquaintances try to call her just “N__a” but they soon see that they are in the minority there and cave to the peer pressure. For her first six months or so she just went by “Baby” and sometimes we still call her that. Calling her “Baby N__a” was a conscious move towards using her given name, and I would like to call her just by her first name, perhaps even by her first and middle names, as that’s a nice Southern tradition, at some point.
In this space, however, the name “Baby” feels right still since that is part of what we call her, but then to those of you outside looking in, it might seem too stylized or self-consciously anonymous (I’m just guessing–maybe not). And when I see pictures like that one, well, “Baby” just doesn’t fit.
So what to call her here? Here are some prospects:
Cutie McCuterson (too hard to type, but oh so true)
Princess (bad connotations, but I do call her that)
N (her initial; maybe, but boring)
Toddler (to continue with the theme)
Daughter (goes with Husband, but I still get freaked out saying I have a daughter–that just seems so grown up)
Her actual name (but I just don’t feel totally comfortable with that)
Naomi (the name I wanted to name her but apparently it’s difficult to pronounce in Swedish; also I think if I used it here I would feel bad that we never named her that, since I picked that name out when I was 13 and I’m still a little unhappy we didn’t use it, and maybe that’s why I’ve had all this ambivalence in Real Life about using Baby’s real name)
Or something else? What do you think? How have you handled this?
