And introducing .... (Ms.) Munchkin!

Well, it was the big birthday weekend last week, and I guess I've just been too pooped to blog! Doesn't help that we've all come down with daycaritis. Again. I've lost my voice and my will to live.

So to those of you awaiting the new nom de blogue and the photos ... whoops. And here they are:


Ms. Munchkin gets her game face on, awaiting the arrival of cake, her first official taste of Sugary Junk with 'icing' of uncertain but definitely transfat laden provenance. And arrive it does, to general applause:


Yes, there is a little candle shaped like a one. Munchkin totally held her own in what was likely a stressful situation: a room full of stranger grownups interspersed with caregivers, and a sampling of wild and noisy children and toddlers, with everyone staring at her and singing, while bearing a large flaming pink and white slab ever closer to her little face.

She smiled.

And then she sampled:


Cake! She ate a little, but was, surprisingly, not too impressed. Huh.

So that's the birthday photos: our baby is now a toddler, our formula-chugger now on whole milk, the wee squalling, squirming, red-faced alien we brought home for the hospital a year ago is now twenty-four pounds big, crawling, pulling herself up to stand, telling us 'done' and 'up' and generally charming us with her emerging little personality.

She's no longer our Miss Baby--she seems to have become Munchkin, or more formally, Ms. Munchkin. I've been calling her that a lot lately, now that she's so mobile and silly and hungry and sweet. My dictionary tells me (although Sage, I'm happy for corrections or more backstory ...) that 'munchkin' is an informal noun designating a child, and that the word comes to us from The Wizard of Oz. That seems apposite, for now. It is kind of a magical stage we're going through, fairly short on temper, and mostly long on discovery and fun. I'll let you know when I start to tap my ruby slippers together, wishing for home.

Her Bad Mother was soliciting nicknames the other day--apparently, Wonderbaby in real life is referred to as The Budge.

Here for the first time, I reveal to you some of the things (not all of them flattering) we have called our Munchkin, chronologically:

There were, first, the medical terms:
- Baby Zygote
- Baby Embryo
- Baby Fetus
- Baby [lastname]

There were, and continued to be, the generic names, as well:
- Baby Daughter
- Miss Baby
- Baby Doll (my own mom used to call me this, so it figures in a lot of songs
- Baby [firstname]
- and, from Pynchon, and adorably, Milkdud

But there is one nickname unique to us. Maybe not cute like Budgie or The Budge or Budgerigar, but heartfelt:

Baby Dink.

As in, "Your baby daughter is being a baby dink." So 'dink' in this case is a pejorative marking bad behaviour. Yes, yes, there are no bad babies, and really no bad behaviours in, say, three-month old infants. But sometimes, they can be dinks, non? The nickname led to a series of derivatives, quite useful not least for their absurdity, which could often defuse a frustrating situation: Your baby (I might say) has been engaging in some dinkish behaviours today. Or, There was dinkishness aplenty at naptime!

The nickname even spawned further nicknames, rendering the original in ever more absurd, and comical terms:
- Dinkish MacBaby
- Baby McDinksalot
- Dinky Poopington

Come to think of it, potty-humour abounds in some of our other nicknames as well:
- Stinky McBottom
- Pooper
- Smelly Smellerino

Dinkish or not, poopy or not, we always picked her up and we always cared. Can we help it if we wanted to have a little fun with it while she's still preverbal? Will we ever, someday, be able to convince her that 'Baby Dink' was a term, in its way, of affection? Or should we just wait until she has children to tell her.

In any case, our Miss Baby is now--at the ripe old age of one--a far less dinkish (if more poopy) little girl. She's graduated to Munchkinhood.