My name is not Mommy.

“Before we learn w, let’s practice the last slanted lowercase letter we learned: y,” I declared.

“But I already know how to write a lowercase y. See?”

Ari crammed a lowercase y between the midline and the baseline. Without an audible I-told-you-so, I modeled the way the slant-right went from the midline to the baseline and then the slant-left went below the baseline.

“Oh yeah!” he said remembering. He proceeded to print lowercase y several times on his dry-erase board.

“W, next!” he said.

“Not so fast. I’d like to practice writing some words with a lowercase y. Now, your name doesn’t have a lowercase y in it, but my first name does. It may not sound like a y is at the end of it, but there is.”

Nothing.

“Do you know what my first name is?”

Ari stared at me blankly. Then his face lit up, “Shubitz!”

Yes, I did make him write my name afterward!

“That’s my last name. What’s my first name?” I asked.

“Schaefer,” he replied.

“That’s your last name. What’s my first name?”

“Mommy?” he said.

MOMMY!?!??! This kid knows my cell phone number. he knows our address. I spent so much time teaching him these things — and making sure he knew my last name was different than his — that I didn’t realize he didn’t know my first name!

“It’s Stacey,” I replied. I wrote it on my dry-erase board and showed him, letter-by-letter, how to spell my first name.

“Oh, yeah! I knew that.

Nice try, but you didn’t, kiddo.

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