Reagan and Ellie completely oblvious to how much my sister and I ponder everything related to them.

I received an email from my sister Adriane, who also happens to be the mother of my niece who is only 3 days younger than Ellie, and my nephew that is 2 1/2. 

SUBJECT: ?

I need to know what you are calling Ellie’s “V”.  I feel we need to be on the same page for this!!!

A

So naturally I called her immediately to discuss.  You see, because my sister and I have kids so close in age that spend loads of time together, we agreed to try to be on the same page as best we could in our approach to parenting. 

Sidenote: This is a lot easier said than done because my sister is the most patient human being on the face of the earth…and I am not.  For example, when we were home this weekend, Ellie repeatedly got up on her little chair and stood up on it.  I was mid-conversation with my brother-in-law, and said a few times to Ellie, “Aeh, aeh, aeh…don’t do that.  Get down.” 

The fourth time, I took the little chair away from her and put it on top of the table.

Okay, maybe not the best example of my stellar parenting, but the climbing is so not entertaining, and I was discussing something very important that I cannot recall right now.

Adriane laughed and said, “God, you are just like TJ (poor TJ – she says this a lot), Ellie needs to know why what she was doing was wrong.”

Now TJ and I both non-verbally agreed that if a child sees all parties in the room sitting in a chair on their asses, they know climbing up and standing on the chair is wrong.  But my sister, being the more mature of the bunch, recognizes that kids need explanations and such.  Which is also why she has decided that we need to come to an agreement about what to call Ellie and Reagan’s “V”.

So when I called her, she answered the phone, and I took a big sigh, and said…”Uhhh…I don’t know what to call it.  I was thinking about this the other day and put it on the list of things I need to figure out.”

“I know…I just think we should call it the same thing so the girls aren’t confused,” Adriane said.

“Well, we could always just go with vagina.  But that is so clinical…but at least it is correct.”

“Yea…but I think we need some sort of nickname.”

“Okay, well we called it a jookie when we were little…” I said, whispering into the phone while at work.

“Right,” Adriane recalled, “Which was weird, because I was so confused when I found out no one else called it that.”

I must interrupt here for a moment and explain that this nickname was what my female cousins, sisters and I called our situation for years and years.  And if we want to make one another laugh today, we will say it randomly at family gatherings. 

I know, you are probably wrinkling your nose thinking, “Huh…never heard of that one before.”

Don’t feel bad.  To this day, it is still a word of unknown origin.  Actually, now that I think of it, I must interview my mom and my aunt to figure out where the hell they came up with this – both of them are nurses…which makes this term even more interesting. 

Forget it…once they see this post, they will comment and answer my question.

“Huh…I don’t know.  I mean we are very obsessed with our belly button but there is certainly an awareness that something else exists under the diaper…so I need to figure something out,” I said, all of the sudden a little stressed about not having a clear answer.

And speaking of awareness, poor kid already knows that our bodies look nothing alike and she appears to be completely disgusted by what I have going on.  When I get undressed to take a bath with her, she looks me up and down and says, “Yucccckk, eeecccchhhkkk…” just like she does when she has food all over her hands. 

I am not kidding or exaggerating even a little bit.

Don’t worry about my body image – it’s stellar.  My one-year-old doesn’t even want to see me naked, so dating again should go swimmingly.

Anyway, that is for another blog post, when I have wine in the apartment.  So back to the issue and conversation at hand:

“Well Tré seems to be fine with weenie and penis…but I really have no idea what to do about the girls, and now I have to go interview someone for an article I am writing, so we will need to get back to this,” I said.

I pondered this question all day, and all I kept hearing in my head were all the nicknames that my girlfriends and I have called our…um…stuff…over the years.  All of the terms have been entertaining, especially after some wine or when said just a tad too loudly in a crowded bar (or office), but none are really appropriate for a child.

As soon as I left the office, I called my sister.

“I have no idea what we are going to do about this.  I don’t have an answer,” I said pretty definitively.

“I knooooowwwwww…what are we going to do???”

So there you have it folks…our first attempt at getting on the same parenting page and we are failing.  And we will be left to pretend the only thing that exists below the chin is a belly, belly button, knees, feet and toes. 

Nah, no worries.  Shouldn’t cause huge emotional and body image issues down the road.