Metal Meredith

or Everything Is Coming Up Sweetie

Vivienne has many pet names, some nice and some not-so-nice. I won’t bother typing out the list because inevitably someone will be offended that we called her “Poppy Nuts” for a good year. But one that has stuck the whole time has been my constant use of “Sweetie Pie”. Apparently this has not been lost on Vivienne.

About 6 times a day Vivienne asks if we would like to play with her dollhouse. Up in her room are 4 play areas; one has a dollhouse, across the room is the playground, floating around between is a Jungle Train and on her table is a Pirate Ship. We spend our time taking the 3 boys and girls, the mom, dad and baby back and forth from house to playground. Then, the tiger will be sad and need to find his friend the parrot at the pirate ship and all hell breaks loose.

Somehow in the midst of all of this playing, Vivienne named all of the people in her game. This is where it all began. There is a Asian girl, her name is Meredith. The mom in the house, her name is Meredith, too. Then, the dad is Dad, the little boy is Little Boy (we never said she was super genius.) Both the baby and the little blond haired girl ended up with the name, ‘Sweetie Pie’. We thought that was really cute.

Then, everything started being Sweetie Pie, the bear and the little bear was Mommy and Sweetie Pie. Phil made her a tiny juice cup out of playdough which suddenly made her juice into a game of mommy and sweetie. Sticks, lint, pieces of paper, french fries, cars, frogs, nothing is able to escape the name game. Lately, the banisters on the stairs have even been tagged. When going up or down, Vivienne will tell you, “You hold onto the Mommy railing and I will hold Sweetie Pie railing. Then, we will share the big one together.”

The other fun in naming comes when there is more than 2 things and they get seperated. If in the car and one goldfish snack falls down into the chair, the other has lost his friend. Then we must do a little fake crying goldfish that is sad because he lost ‘Friend’ goldfish in the chair. Later, when reunited, the goldfish will exclaim “Sweetie, Sweetie, I find you. I miss you so much!”

I suppose we should just thank our stars there no one has been named “Dumbass” and move on.