Parents give their babies all sorts of nicknames.  Sometimes they are based on their given names, but it seems more often than not, they are coined for entirely different reasons.  For example:

 

We called Jacob “Peanut” when I was pregnant with him (and sometimes still do) because when we first saw him on the ultrasound, he looked like, well, a peanut.

 

 

Lately, we’ve been calling him Bear, Jacob Bear, Baby Bear, etc., because his outerwear has a teddy bear theme goin’ on.

 

 

(This also make reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears more relatable, which is important in a fairy tale.)

 

 

If you can believe it, this  causes some confusion, as we already have a close friend we call Bear.

 

 

What baffles me, though, both as a daughter and as a mother, is why parents are so inclined to give their children nicknames referencing food.  My mom sometimes calls me Pumpkin (pronounced “punk-in”).  By the time we brought Jacob home from the hospital, I had a string of nicknames for him as long as my arm, and most had to do with Munchkins and pie.

 

Let’s just take a minute and imagine a Munchkin pie: a graham cracker crust filled with row upon row of doughnut holes, resting in a fluffy cloud of whipped cream.  Sounds good, huh?  To be revisited after Lent . . .

 

Why do parents refer to their children as food?  Why is it that people are often saying things like “I could just eat you right up” to babies?  To be fair, Jacob does laugh when I pretend to eat his toes, but why do I try in the first place?

 

Just another parenting phenomenon to remain a mystery forever . . .