![\"Mama](\"http:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/09\/img_2648.JPG\")
<\/p>\nHaving a baby changes a lot of things: body-shape, sleep habits, recreational possibilities, you name it. But we were surprised to notice that it has changed our names, even before Lucy has begun to speak. <\/p>\n
In the pre-Lucy days, we even discussed this issue. With great objectivity we opined, “We won’t need to refer to each other as ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa.’ Why not just keep calling each other ‘Jon’ and ‘Ann’? Why do parents call each other ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad,’ anyway?”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It hasn’t quite worked out as we expected. For one thing, we are constantly talking *to* Lucy, so we naturally feel the need to refer to each other with parent-names. I suppose it is a good thing — we want to include Lucy in our conversation.<\/p>\n
But it feels weird when ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ creep into our vocabulary at unnecessary times. “Are you finished with your dinner, Papa?” “Mama, did you check the mail today?” It unearths deeper questions about the way our identities have changed since Lucy’s arrival. What does it mean to be a mother and a father? How does that affect our relationship? What should we do to protect our “couple-ness” when Lucy requires so much attention?<\/p>\n
I’m not talking about the issue of formality vs. informality here, or about whether parents do (or should) break down a generation gap by teaching kids to address adults by first name. (See C. S. Lewis’s “_Voyage of the Dawn Treader_”:http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0060234865\/octothorppres-20, where Eustace Scrubb’s parents fall into this category.) For us, it’s more about what the defining relationships are: parent-child or husband-wife? Jon puts it like this: has Lucy’s gravitational field pulled us so totally into orbit around *her* that we’re primarily satellites of hers even in how we name ourselves — or are we still on a first-name basis with each other as spouses?<\/p>\n
Jon and I feel really lucky to have a strong, healthy marriage. We think it is one of the best gifts we can give to Lucy. But of course becoming parents is a legitimately life-changing event, too! Having a baby in the house poses new challenges to our life together, but I think we are ready to take them on — and try to keep our first names in our vocabulary!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having a baby changes a lot of things: body-shape, sleep habits, recreational possibilities, you name it. But we were surprised to notice that it has changed our names, even before Lucy has begun to speak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}