What do you call your grandparents? To my kids, my mother is “Nana” and my father is “Grampa”. Grampa is currently called “gumpa” by N, just as he used to be called that by C when he was younger. He’s fine with that. We have some friends who call their grandparents “Groty and Grungy”. No, I don’t know which is which.

In any case, we recently had a little name conflict between Nana and N.

Nana, like a lot of loving grandparents, created a pet name for N by taking the first syllable of his name and adding an “ey” to the end of it. None of the rest of us do that, but I’m all for pet names. If you want to create a special name for one of my kids, you’re certainly welcome to. I know that I certainly have a few special names for them…

But that’s another story. This one is about Nana and N and how they resolved what he would be called.

The problem with Nana’s pet name was that N didn’t like it. She persisted, of course, as Nana’s tend to do. Finally, one day N started calling her “Nanny”.

Well, that just wouldn’t do. A Nanny is an entirely different person than a Nana. She tried to get him to switch by correcting him and speaking slowly: “No, Na-na. Naaaa – Naaaa”

His response? “Nanny”

Finally she said “okay, N”, using his real name. He nodded and said “Nana!” She switched back and forth a few times to verify it. Every time she used his pet name, he called her Nanny. There’s no arguing with the logic (or in this case the methods) of a one year old.

Now Nana is looking for a new pet name to use with N.