What my nearly 2 year old nephew calls his family members and why

his mom: mama

his dad: dada

his brother (3 months): baby or bibi (beebee). You would think he'd call the baby bebe as he only speaks Spanish (and a handful of English words), but he only uses the English word because it's a family habit to say "baby" in English even if the entire sentence/conversation is in Spanish. No one knows why. We all do this all the time and he's heard us do it, hence, baby. I think bibi is him saying baby in affectionate baby talk about/to his brother, like his adult family members do.

his maternal grandmother (my mom): mom (in a Spanish accent). This is because whenever my mom is around him, he's always hearing me, my siblings, and his parents call my mom Mom. It's hilarious. My sister's trying to emphasize she's Abuelita, so he occasionally calls her 'ita (Lita) now (see why below). 

his maternal grandfather (my dad): 'ito (Lito). It was decided early on that my sister's (and my) parents would be abuelito/abuelita and my brother-in-law's parents would be abuelo/abuela to differentiate them, and my dad decided he wanted to be called Lito, which is of course the second half of Abuelito. It's an extra-affectionate way of saying grandpa. For some reason saying ita/ito is easier than saying Lito/Lita.

me (his aunt): tia (aunt in Spanish). Although now he is starting to glancingly say "tia 'shel" or another adorable mispronunciation of my name. I love it.

my older brother (his uncle): tio (uncle in Spanish). My sister is also trying to get him to say his aunts and uncles' names, so he occasionally attempts a "tio 'ado". 

my younger brother (his uncle): otro tio (other uncle). lmao. He left before our nephew could grasp Tio Jon.

my sister-in-law (his aunt): Tia Amy, clear as a bell. One of his favorite books has a nurse named Amy in it, so he got her name right away even though she and my brother were only here for the weekend.

his paternal grandmother: otra mom (other mom) to differentiate her from 'mom' (my mom). lmaooooo  My brother-in-law also calls his mom Mom.

his paternal grandfather: I am not sure! I have never heard him address his grandfather when I'm around. I will have to ask my sister.

his paternal aunts: otra tia to differentiate them from me. lmaooooooo. Yes I am very smug about this. He is starting to say "Tia [name]" though so it won't last long. He also initially called Amy "otra tia" until he learned her name.

his paternal uncles: one can only assume otro tio, although I've never heard him address them since he wasn't talking as much the last time we all hung out.

his cousins: I think the only one he really knows/remembers is his older cousin Daniel, whom my nephew addresses by name (Spanish pronunciation). If he talks to/about his little cousins (two of his aunts had babies before and after his brother was born), he probably calls them baby as well (or otro baby).

I love hanging out with my nephew. He is so smart and curious and inquisitive and is picking up language like gangbusters. He'll run around and say/yell the family member's moniker when he sees them or when he wants their attention. It's so cute. He'll also grab or point at stuff that belongs to/he associates with us and say our names. I love that little guy.

A note

Hello Russian search engine bots, casual googlers trying to find a book review for a specific book I've happened to read/write one for, and perhaps even nosy people who accessed my blogspot through a different social medium back when I linked to it there:

I just wanted to mention that the HarperCollins strike is in full effect, and as such I will not be reviewing books published by HarperCollins or any of its subsidiaries until the strike is over. (My understanding is that buying HC books is fine, as the strikers/union does not want to deprive the authors of their income.) 

I stand with the HarperCollins workers and hope HC will do the right thing. People deserve to be paid a living wage for their work.

Book Review: The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

A year after an accidentally whirlwind grand tour with her brother Monty, Felicity Montague has returned to England with two goals in mind—avoid the marriage proposal of a lovestruck suitor from Edinburgh and enroll in medical school. However, her intellect and passion will never be enough in the eyes of the administrators, who see men as the sole guardians of science.

But then a window of opportunity opens—a doctor she idolizes is marrying an old friend of hers in Germany. Felicity believes if she could meet this man he could change her future, but she has no money of her own to make the trip. Luckily, a mysterious young woman is willing to pay Felicity’s way, so long as she’s allowed to travel with Felicity disguised as her maid.

In spite of her suspicions, Felicity agrees, but once the girl’s true motives are revealed, Felicity becomes part of a perilous quest that leads them from the German countryside to the promenades of Zurich to secrets lurking beneath the Atlantic.

A fellow ace friend gave me this book for my birthday. I was jazzed as it'd been on my to-read list ever since I heard about it through one of bookstagram's ace books lists. I haven't read the first one, which I think is about Monty (the brother) getting together with his boyfriend. You don't really need to have read it to get the sequel, but it does occasionally reference the trio's misadventures in the previous book. I can't stand reading series books out of order, but since this was a gift, I didn't want to wait too long. 

To say Felicity dreams of being a doctor would be an understatement. She eats, sleeps, and breathes medicine. She is actually in Edinburgh because at the time (the 1700s, date unspecified), it was the medical science capital of the world (Europe). Obviously she is refused at every medical school due to sexism, but she won't give up. She decides to crash the wedding of her doctor hero on the tenuous grounds that she was best friends with the bride, Johanna, when they were children (tenuous because she wasn't invited and they had a friend breakup a few years ago). She hopes she can talk her way into being tutored by him or being his assistant. The mysterious woman who pretends to be her servant is Sim, a badass Algerian piratess who kickstarts the dangerous and scientific adventure that she, Felicity and Johanna go on. 

I mostly liked Felicity, and would categorize her as aroace because she had no interest in romance, either with men or women. (I'm sensing a theme.) She did kind of feel like the classic Modern Feminist Heroine in an unmodern setting (you know, the type who refuses to wear corsets or marry without love but in a really modern way), and it amused me to read in the afterword that the author had specifically been trying to avoid this trope. Sorry, sister. I ended up liking Johanna way more than I thought I would, since she's kind of Felicity's girly opposite. I liked the girls teaming up and how Felicity gets to flex her medical skills.

THIS IS THE PART OF THE REVIEW WHERE I TALK ABOUT SPOILERS

Felicity's "there is only one right way to be an intelligent/scholarly/scientific woman" shtick annoyed me. She looked down on Johanna because she was into girly stuff like dresses and parties and boys, and that's what led to their friendship breakdown. It's rather "I'm not like other girls". I kept waiting for someone to point out to Felicity that no matter how plainly, practically and unfashionably she dressed, men would never take her seriously, but no one ever did. When she meets up with Johanna and realizes how well she still knows her and the importance their friendship had to her, that really tugged my heartstrings and made me miss my ex-best friend. I'm glad the girls become friends again.

A massively hearty F U to the doctor guy for all the shit he put the girls through. He sucks. He does get a comeuppance but not so much what he deserves.

Oh, the scientific mystery? It's sea dragons. SEA DRAGONS!! They have iridescent blue scales that make you high when you ingest them. Naturally they are being hunted to extinction. I wish they were real. We do have sea dragons, but they are like this and not like this.

I would walk the plank for Sim. She's so into Felicity, although of course Felicity is not, and flirts with her, calling her a rare wildflower men would walk the whole earth to find (swoon). DUMP FELICITY MARRY ME

END SPOILERS I GUESS, EXCEPT OF COURSE FOR THE TRIGGER WARNINGS

Overall I really liked this book and want to read the others (although Monty sounds kind of annoying). *~Friendship and science!~* 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: November 3
From: bday gift from a friend
Status: keeping tentatively

Cover notes: I like this cover. The illustrated doodles are fun. However, Felicity's hair seems to be pinned up (the book is very clear about her always having her hair back in a braid), and, most damning of all, she seems to be wearing an Edwardian dress! (It could be an atypical Victorian dress bodice, I guess, but there's no skirt volume. Either way that's way too late.) Sigh.

Trigger warnings: physical abuse of child and teens, abusive parent, teenage girl coerced into marrying adult man, man threatens to shoot dog to force girl to marry him, teenage girls imprisoned/tied up by adult men, underage alcoholism, underage alcohol abuse, homophobia mentions, substance addiction, addict is villain who does bad things, drugs (snuff), animal cruelty, animal/fish death (fishing/hunting), medical gore, blood, period-typical sexism, poison, character nearly dies from being poisoned, parental abandonment of child, illness mentions, homelessness mentions

Book Review: Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever.

In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.

But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It's a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.

But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston's School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose.

But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. 

And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.

I read this book for Halloween, as it has zombies. This one was purchased from the thrift store a while back. Bookstagram informed me that a side character is ace, which made me happy. Part of the reason I picked this book above my other spooky reads was because I wasn't ready to let Ace Week go. 

Anyway, WHEW THIS BOOK. It was so gory and horrifying and suspenseful and amazing. While it does take place in an alternate timeline, the racism and inequality of the Reconstruction South feels like it rang true (obviously I was not alive then but I'm guessing it was like that). It's really saying something when the racism is scarier than the zombies. The zombies themselves are pretty standard; the only unique qualities are that their eyes turn yellow, and the newly turned are faster and stronger than the longer-undead ones. I don't consume a lot of zombie media, but that was new to me. There was a line in the book about white people claiming certain people of color had been bitten in order to enslave them, in an echo of the 13th amendment loophole. There were parts of this that were hard to read and very sad (zombies attacking children etc., the kind of racism that you already know to expect).

I liked Jane, although I found her impulsivity and inability to keep her mouth shut annoying. You'd think a Black girl raised in the mid- to late-1800s would know when not to mouth off, even if she was raised by a white mother who coddled her and didn't believe in corporate punishment for Black workers. She was pretty badass though. Katherine, Jane's classmate in the finishing school, begins as an annoying tattling prig, but due to circumstances that bring them together, grows on Jane and us. She's the ace character, and due to her lack of interest in relationships, I read her as aroace. There's a fun surprise as to another character's LGBTQ+ identity. There's also a Black smoothtalking conman and nice white scientist for Jane to have sparks with. One of the more interesting characters was Mr. Redfern, a Native American badass and morally gray character who is only in the first half of the book. I hope we see him again in the sequel, which I can't wait to read. 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: October 31
From: Savers thrift store
Status: giving away eventually

Cover notes: I really like this cover. "Jane" with her sickles in front of the American flag? Perfection. My only quibble is that she seems to be wearing an Edwardian dress and the book clearly takes place in 1880 or so.

Trigger warnings: murder, gore, zombies attacking/eating children and other people, attempted murder of infant, attempted murder of child, attempted drowning of child by adult, white supremacy, racism, death/murder by shooting (multiple instances), racial slurs, violence, Black character struck and flogged by white men, use of Black servant as zombie bait in medical experiment, police brutality, evil sheriff character, starvation, enforced hunger, imprisonment, internalized white supremacy in Black characters who betray their own, the Bible/religion/Christianity used to support racism, segregation and slavery; corrupt preacher character, sexism, misogynoir, whorephobia (prejudice against sex workers)