Go! Go! Go, Noo Noo!

So many years ago, when my brother's first wife was pregnant with her first child, everyone asked me if I was going to let the child call me Uncle Noo Noo. My mother had been calling me Noo Noo since I was a wee lad. It is actually a short form of Nooker Nooker Noodle Nose. I have absolutely no idea where that name came from. I was adamant. I would be Uncle Rich. A man (especially one in his early twenties) needs his dignity.

My ability to stay resolute lasted until the first time I held the boy in my arms. They asked me as I was holding this tiny little guy in my arms, if he could call me Noo Noo. I said he could call me anything he wants.

Years, later I am still Uncle Noo Noo. The Boy is now almost a teenager so he has dropped the entire nickname thing but my little brother now has baby girl and she is just at that age where every day she has a new word or a new way to combine words to get her needs, wants and desires across to whoever happens to be with her at the time. As I baby sit her three times a week she has gotten quite adept at bossing me around.

The thing is, at this age, their joy is pure. There is no lifetime of experiences to dilute the joy, no regrets to lessen it. The girl shrieks her happiness. She will do a little dance when she likes music. She will giggle at most anything. One will do just about anything to make baby girl happy because the joy is contagious. One can not help but be uplifted in it's presence.

Sleep is the enemy. Baby Girl will make herself miserable trying to avoid going to bed. She will yell, kick, pull hair do whatever it takes to make sure she doesn't miss a minute of wakefulness. Something important might happen. It's times like this you feel bad, because there really isn't much you can do to explain the concept of a nap to baby girl. Sure she might feel better after a nap, but she doesn't want one and that is that.

Grandma is very much the sap. She doesn't want baby girl to be sad. She will order me about trying and make herself nuts trying to please the child. She will decide what each new baby girl phrase is. "Uncle Noo Noo she wants you to go cook her come chicken" or "Uncle Noo Noo she doesn't like it when you make the bears talk."

Some directions are very clear. Babygirl will walk up to me and put both of her arms up to be picked up. Then she says, "Go! Go! Go, Noo Noo!" and it means it is time to take her outside to walk around the house a few times, to check out the rose bushes and the grape leaves, to touch the bark of the giant oak trees and point at the front of the house and say, "Grandma!" And we can do this for as long as I can hold her. My have given out every time long before she is ready to go in.

I think these little ones are natures way of humbling us. We let em call us whatever they want. (My cousin has been renamed Doogie. I bet it follows her for life). You will find the most rigid people playing peek a boo with a toddler. Just the other day I was talking to a friend online and he had to go away from the keyboard because a two year old was busy pounding on his space bar making the creature on the screen jump up and down.

It also serves as a good barometer. If a person starts giving yas crap about a child inflicted nick name, they obviously haven't spent enough time with a kid.

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