It’s funny to see how quickly a tiny baby aquires nicknames!  Until we name our kids, I usually call them something like ‘cutie tootie baby’ – not so original, but so what?  As soon as this baby was born, the kids already started calling him ‘chamoodi’.  This was due to something that happened when our last baby was born.  My ds was then 8, and because that baby had so much dark hair (he’s very fair now, with blue eyes – people can’t believe it when we say he was darker than any of the kids at birth), said he looked like a gorilla.  He asked my dh how to say ‘gorilla’ in Hebrew, and my dh, knowing what our son’s intent was in asking, told him ‘chamoodi’ (cutie).  So ds went around calling the baby chamoodi, thinking he was putting one over on all of us by calling the baby a gorilla.  I think he did wonder a little why we didn’t stop him.  The look on his face when he discovered a few days later that he had been calling the baby a cutie and everyone but him realized that was priceless! 

When this baby was a day old, my ds6 told me that he looked like Yoda (from Star Wars).  He didn’t say it in a joking way, or to make fun of the baby, so I asked him what he meant.  He told me that ‘the baby has old eyes’, which was perceptive of him, since newborn do have a look of ancient wisdom in their eyes.  He’s a very different personality from his older ‘gorilla’ naming brother, so it didn’t occur to him to call the baby Yoda. 🙂

But don’t worry, we still have plenty of nicknames already in use!  As soon as the baby was named (Shimshon), that very day we had three different nicknames for him.  Shim, Shimmy, Shimshy – and my ds3 said he wanted to call him ‘Shimmy the youngest’, because of a book we have by that name. I do think that when giving a child a name, you should give them a name that both you and they will be happy to use.  But I’ve nicknamed all of my kids, and as long as the nicknames are nice, then I’m the last to complain!

Avivah