Boo.

We've heard that nicknames just happen. All of a sudden you realize that you've been calling your child some silly name that has nothing to do with the name you scrawled on their birth certificate. And so is the story of Grace's first nickname: Boo. I'd like to say that Jeff and I really love Monsters Inc. (featuring a cute kid named Boo) or that I talked Jeff into making a daily reference to my favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird (Boo Radley). No, Grace's nickname was created because Jeff and I don't speak fluent Russian. Doesn't "babushka" sound like a synonym for "cute, cuddly BABY"? We thought so. We referred to her as Babushka, then it got slimmed down to Bushka, and then just plain Boo. We have since learned that we were calling our daughter GRANDMOTHER in another language. Foreign language has never been our strong suit...