Julian has discovered that he can call us by name and we will actually RESPOND. Now that he knows this powerful trick, he's working it all he can.

Last week he was still saying "DA!" to get my attention, but it's pretty easy to ignore "DA!" if you are trying to eat breakfast, or unload the dishwasher, or read more than a single paragraph at a time. Also, Julian would call out "DA!" in the middle of the night, and it would take me a few minutes to rouse myself from slumber and realize that he was calling me. Yes, lucky ME, on the receiving end of a 1:30am wake-up call.

He has skipped from random whining/crying to "DA!" to "Mommy!" in about a week. It's hard to ignore it when he calls me Mommy. Mostly because it's "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommmy!" until I not only look at him, but respond with full attention. Or preferably kick a ball in his direction. Or let him kick a ball to me. Or bat a balloon.

Dan gets the "Dada!" treatment, and Bugs gets called "Puppy!" or "Doggie!" if Julian wants him and he's not in the immediate vicinity. (Yes, Julian has already caught on to our habit of calling Bugs by every possible name except, er..."Bugs".)

Julian also likes to play the name game. He points at each of us and calls us by name. "Mommy...Dada...Doggie...Baby...Mommy...Dada" etc. Sometimes he calls me "Puppy", then corrects himself, "No, Mommy".

Julian was kicking the ball with Dan in the living room the other day, and I heard Julian calling, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!", then getting no results..."DADA!" He was calling Dan by the default name "Mommy", before realizing that, wait...Dada has his OWN name that he responds to!

Still, every time he would get excited he would yell, "Mommy! Mommy! Dada!", until Dan said, "Hey, I'm Dada, not Mommy" and then Julian called him "Mommy!Dada!" after that, with just one lone introductory "Mommy!" before adding the "Dada!".

Meanwhile I was drinking a shot of Bailey's while folding laundry, listening to the above dialogue. Yep, because when you're a SAHM, you party when you can work it into your choring schedule.

My best friend AJ lives on the island of St. Martin, aux Caribes. I was visiting her once before I had Julian, probably even before I got married, and by the time I dragged myself out of bed and over to her house around 10:00am or so she had already put in a long, full 3-4 hours with her two young kids.

I waltzed in all sleepy-eyed late one morning and AJ was in the kitchen with her daughter Scarlett crawling around her legs. She had obviously been choring in the house for hours...cooking breakfast, getting the kids fed and dressed, cleaning up the kitchen, planning what to make for lunch for everyone.

"Yep," she said as she cracked open a cold beer. "The good part about being a stay-at-home mom is that you can drink a beer at 10:00am if you want to."

By the way, I've gotta break in and say this, because it has been weighing on my mind lately.

Sorry AJ, it took me 5 years to catch up to you on the motherhood thing. I apologize for all the utterly retarded things I did and said before I had Julian. I'm sure I said some ignorant BS about letting the kids cry it out that you wanted to slap me for at the time. Like who the hell was I giving ANY parenting advice? Sheesh.

I could have been so much more helpful to you with your kids when I visited, but I just had no clue. I did try to help in other ways, like keeping the kitchen clean...at least I knew how to clean a kitchen.

I've just been thinking how clueless I was about kids before I had Julian. I just had the most ridiculous, unreal ideas about parenting. It's just a foreign planet until you get there and figure it out for yourself, I guess. Well, I hope I didn't embarrass myself too much back then.

P.S. I get it now.