What's in a Name?

When I was a young girl, I was rather creative in naming each and every one of my stuffed animals -- and I had quite a few. And you'd better believe I remembered every last name, too.

Since becoming a mother, however, I've become much more pedestrian in my naming efforts. Edward's toys have names like "sheep" and "frog," or when more information is needed for the purposes of differentiation, "blue dog" and "puppy dog." Come to think on it, the most creative names I've bestowed in the past few years are "Edward" and "Robert."

I was actually quite happy with this system, insofar as I thought about it at all. But then Edward decided to take matters into his own hands.

One of our favorite books these days is Mo Willems' City Dog, Country Frog. If you haven't read it, you should: it's that good. It's a brief, non-sappy, and beautiful story about the impact of good friends on our lives. And each of us here Millers loves it so. Anyway, its two central characters, if you have not ascertained as much already, are called "City Dog" and "Country Frog," respectively.

So. When we arrived home from Utah a few weeks ago, Edward kept asking for "Trunky Frog!" I had no clue what he was asking until he added another request: "And City Dog!"

Apparently, Edward has taken over the job of naming his toys. Life will never be the same.

At first, I thought he was referring to the stuffed animals we received for Christmas this year:

However, it soon became apparent that all frogs and dogs in this household are now either countrified or citified -- let the culture wars begin! -- and it turns out we've got quite a showing from members of both the bucolic & civilized teams:

My favorite City Dog and Country Frog team, however, you may recognize from other posts. In case you forget their new names, you might consider calling them by their given names -- names I came up with myself in rare moments of maternal creativity: