Yo, crazy lady, you ain’t MY Nana

Dear Baby Sideburns,

My Mother-in-Law refers to herself as Nana when she emails me, leaves me voicemails, texts me, etc. She is not MY Nana! It’s driving me crazy. What should I do?

You’re the best.
Emily

Dear Emily,

Oh, I am SOOOOOO sorry you are going through this. I mean this is like my second biggest peeve. My first is when wives call their husbands Daddy. Because one minute you’re saying, “Daddy, can you get the diaper bag out of the car?” and the next minute it slips out of your mouth in bed and you’re accidentally saying, “Oh yes, yes, harder, Daddy, harder!” Ewwwwwwwy, yucky, gross, wrong, NO NO NO.

And it’s kind of the same thing for Nana. I mean not as disgusting and incesty, but still very very wrong.

So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to start calling yourself Mommy to her. Yup, give that granny a taste of her own icky medicine. Like when you call her on the phone say, “Hi, it’s Mommy!” Or when she visits give her a hug and sweetly say, “Mommy loves you.” Or when you guys are all going out for dinner say, “Mommy thinks Nana should try to go tinkle before we leave.”

Hopefully it’ll freak her out and she’ll stop what she’s doing. And if not and she thinks it’s cute, then I’m sorry she’s totally cray cray and you’re F’ed.

xoxo

Baby Sideburns




There are 12 comments for this article
  1. Dawn at 12:06 pm

    Totally guilty of doing the Daddy thing. :\

    • samantha at 4:36 pm

      im fully guilty of the daddy thing, however its mostly when im talking to my daughter about her father. though sometimes i slip and ask if daddy can get something from the car… but 9/10 thats because shes attached to him and really i suppose im asking them both at once… after my daughter goes to bed though, its all names, and babes. lol.

  2. LGV at 9:41 pm

    Seriously, though.. That is way better advice than I ever would have thought to give her. I was stumped for a minute there… Brilliant! Lol

  3. Tiffany at 9:51 pm

    I don’t know if that’s bad or your MIL insisting that you call her Mrs.______. Seriously…..I just won’t call you anything!!

  4. Michelle at 10:29 pm

    Anti-Christ…sometimes, it just slips out. Otherwise, if completely necessary, her name.

  5. Casey at 11:27 pm

    You can’t really go around calling your husband “John*” to your child? Won’t that just confuse the whole situation?

  6. thevoltz2000 at 6:01 am

    We don’t have issues with the Nana thing. I call my mom “Grammy” when I am with my kids, sometimes I call her mommy by mistake and then everyone gets confused and I feel as if I have reverted back to toddlerhood. I call my husband Pi- long story- but I do call him “daddy” around the kids. And as for the daddy name calling in, um….intimate situations…never happens. I mean, the intimate situations do….not the name calling!!!!!

  7. Betty at 6:54 am

    My MIL already does call me Mommy…

  8. Beth at 7:03 am

    I called my husband’s mom “grandma” because that is all she is to me. She is definitely not my mom, so that is out of the question. I would prefer to call her b****h, but decided to be the bigger person and go with grandma.

  9. kdcochran at 6:06 pm

    I hate it too! But I totally do it! Not sure why or how it happens. Thank God I’ve never said it in the bedroom though! Eck!