John has started calling me Mommy. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong with him calling me Mommy. I call MY mom Mommy. I think she likes it. ;-) But he's always called me Mama. I don't really see why this needs to change just because he can say his ABCs and put a shirt on by himself.
Tommy's response? That I brought this upon myself after breaking my dad's heart when I started calling him Daddy instead of Papa. At about the same age. Sins of the mother, you might say. (Very helpful, sweetheart.)
I guess it's just that it sounds so much more grown-up. Oh, and that he says it in complete sentences, and with just a smidge of guilt trip on the side. Like Tuesday, when instead of taking a nap, he called out to me over the monitor saying things like "Where is my Mommy? I can't find Mommy. Mommy isn't here. Where are you, Mommy?"
So we're working on casual redirection. When John says "Mommy do puzzle?", I respond with "Yes, MAMA will do the puzzle with you." Fortunately, he asks me to do the puzzle about 98 times a day, so we're getting a lot of reinforcement here.
He knows when to milk it, though. Last night at dinner, after very casually saying to him "I love you, John", without expecting a response, he looked right at me and said -- unprompted -- "I love you, Mama."
And then a few seconds later ... "Mommy do puzzle?"
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