Week 241- shouting, drinking and wiping randomer's bums...

My two-year-old son has started calling me Anna.

Not mummy.

Anna.

And calling would be too gentle a description.

It’s more of a bellow, and almost always from a different room.

It’s kind of a bit like getting bollocked by your own children.

‘ANNNAAAAAAAA!’

I’ll race through, thinking there has been some kind of major disaster.

And he’ll be sitting there on the sofa, having found his bottle (which, really he should have grown out of by now, but I don’t have the energy, will-power or determination to tackle that one, but that’s another story.)

So, he’s sitting there waving his empty bottle in the air like a drunk at last orders, chanting, ‘milk. Milk. Milk.’

Or I’ll put him to bed and he’ll leave it just enough time to find Corrie on catch-up and pour a large glass of vin rouge, I’ll sometimes have had the cruel luxury of the first sip and the opening credits, when there it is again.

‘ANNNAAAAAAAA!’

He shares a bedroom with his big sister so I run like lightening* to see what’s up before he wakes her.

And it’s normally a request for a refill of milk, a dropped toy that is almost definitely within his reach that he wants me to pick up, or a slightly rumpled duvet cover that I have to straighten.

Now, I don’t want to get a total monk-on about ‘Annagate’ but basically there are only two people in the entire world who are qualified to call me mummy, and one of them can’t be bothered.

That’s annoying.

Also, we already share different surnames, if he decides to drop the mummy altogether, who’s to say he will even be identified as my own child to strangers and the authorities?

I knew a girl when I was about 15 who called her mum, ‘mum’, and her dad by his first name. I thought he was just an over-familiar family friend who was ALWAYS hanging around for the first two years of our friendship.**

So, for the love of all things fair, please can my son called me mummy.

Because that is brilliant payback for all the less glamorous parts of parenting.

Otherwise I might as well be wiping any old randomer’s bum.

*Faster than a shuffle, slower than a stroll.

** Reason 127 why I didn’t go into investigative journalism.

I've been shortlisted in the Writer category for my blog in the Brilliance in Blogging awards 2016. It's now ALL ABOUT THE VOTES! Please vote for me in the Writer category- https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/BiBs2016Shortlist (section 7) DEADLINE 18 MAY. MASSIVE THANKS AND FINGERS CROSSED!