Oh-Mi...Oh-My.

Kiernan is a fortunate little kid. Not only is he blessed with the three best godparents in the world, he also has four sets of grandparents. Each grandparent goes by a different name. I have mentioned this before. Even given that there are eight of them, he has managed to master most of their names. Some of them came easy. My mother, his Na-Na, for instance, who will object to my use of an adjective in the previous sentence when an adverb was called for. She'll also object to the preposition at the end of that last sentence, incidentally. And my father, his Pap-pap. My stepdad, Pop, as well. Those were easier for him to say, I guess. Plus I spend a lot of time showing him their pictures and saying their names.

Ironically enough, the grandparent with whom he is most familiar, his Gammy--Wendy's mom--has the name that has given him the most trouble. I can't figure it out, either. It's not the "G" sound. Wendy's stepfather, Rance, goes by the grandfather moniker "Grance" (thanks to me). Kiernan started saying "Grance" very early on, whenever he would see a picture of Grance. Until recently he could not say Gammy, though he's seen her many times and is, obviously, crazy about her. Now he says a version of her name...it sounds sort of like, "May-May." Weird that he can manage "Grance", or even a rendition of the word "green", but cannot get "Gammy".

As I talk of in the next post, Wendy's father Jake and her stepmother Karen visited a couple of weeks ago. Jake's grandfather moniker is Granddaddy Jake. That is a mouthful for a toddler. Luckily Karen counters this with a short and sweet grandparent nickname: Omi. However, while "Omi" is short, I expected him to have a hard time with it. Well, needless to say, he adapted.

For Granddaddy Jake, what Kiernan did was come up with a hand sign. I have mentioned many times about how we are teaching Kiernan to sign. Only a couple of people have hand signs so far, most notably his godfathers, Darren and Daniel. We came up with those because before Kiernan could say "Daddy," he would say "Da-da." When referring to his godfathers he would say "Da-da" too because their names both begin with the same sound. So Wendy created hand signs for them. Daniel is a costume designer, so she taught Kiernan to grab the front of his shirt and shake it about when he meant Daniel. Darren is a makeup artist, so Kiernan pats his hand against his face to indicate Darren. His other godparent, Nee-Nee, needs no hand sign since nobody else's name begins with Nee-Nee, but when he's got a bottle in his mouth he touches his knee to indicate Nee-Nee. They are always spoken of as a triumvirate, especially at bedtime, when we sing to him. It's kind of like he's doing that "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" gesture when he speaks of them.

In point of fact, many of you reading this are part of various triumvirates. This is mainly because that works into the rhythm of many of the sleepy time songs we sing to him. No matter what song we sing to him at bedtime, he wants us to work your names into it. There is the obvious song, adapted from school, "Good Night Kiernan" that we will use as an example.

Good night Kiernan.
Good night Kiernan.
Good night Kiernan,
It's time to say good night.

At school the teachers sing "Hello Kiernan" and "Goodbye Kiernan" (of course substituting each kid's name in, when it is their turn). At night we sing the version above. We get through one verse and Kiernan pulls his bottle of milk out of his mouth and says a name. Then we have to work that name into the song. As soon as we say the name he wants, he moves on to the next name in the group. So the song above goes, for instance:

Good night Pap-Pap,
Good night Uncle Mason,
Good night Sandi,
It's time to say good night.

Or,

Good night Ramon,
Good night Sherry,
Good night Jonathan,
It's time to say good night.

[Ramon is our next-door neighbor, here and forever known as the Best Neighbor in the World. Sherry is his girlfriend (also our friend), and Jonathan is his teenaged son (also our friend). Ramon is moving to another neighborhood this week...so we are in a state of mourning. I've never, ever, had a neighbor like this. Oh, and Kiernan is bonkers over him as well. Note to Rance: Today Ramon gave Kiernan the little golf club with which he taught Jonathan how to swing. I cannot express how much we are going to miss this man.]

Moving on. Whether the song is the song above, or "Rockabye Baby", we still are required to work your names in. This gets weird with songs like "Rockabye Baby" or "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". I mean, not every song lends itself to working a person's name into the lyrics. What am I supposed to sing? "Gammy, Gammy, Gammy your boat, gently down the stream"? Kiernan does not care about this. He wants to hear your names when he is going to sleep. Period. The process is somewhat taxing on us, the singers, since his versions of some of the names he says are not all that clear. And he's adding new names to his repertoire all the time. He will repeat a name over and over and over again until we figure out who the heck he's talking about, as well. Only then will he move on to the next name.

Back to hand signs, then. Kiernan does not say the whole name "Granddaddy Jake" yet. He can say "Jake" pretty well, but we really want him to say the whole thing. He cannot, so he and Jake collaborated on a hand sign. The sign is basically sticking his index finger in the air, pointing straight up. Kiernan went through a phase of pointing at everything. Two people really reacted to this, Jake, and Kiernan's Aunt JoAnne. JoAnne would point whenever Kiernan pointed and he found that hilarious. Jake would just point straight up. So that became his sign. Whenever Granddaddy Jake's name is mentioned, Kiernan immediately points to the sky.

Omi is another matter. He says her name, but he says it as two distinct words. "Oh" and "Me". It is so funny. Like a record skipping or something. "Oh-Me...Oh-Me." Imagine a hiccup between the words "Oh" and "Me" when you say it in your head, to get the idea. He loves to say that name. And when Omi and Jake were here, Kiernan spent the entire time following her around the house and saying, "Oh-Me...Oh-Me." And pointing at the sky.

I guess you could say they bonded.