My heart is being torn apart and stomped on, bits ingested by cat and then furballed out, as my 8 year old decides to call me mom instead of mommy.

I try to ignore him, pretending there is no such person called MOM in this house but it doesn't work. He just keeps saying Mom! Mom! MOM!! MOM!!!! until he's shrieking, the volume equivalent of doing 0-60 in under a second.

Then to humour me, as he is now the master of patronization, he finally concedes and says Mom-mie, with the "mie" part falling down and no way is it getting back up.

He reasons he is too old to say Mommy and he's sorry but I'm just going to have to get used to it.

But I don't want to get used to it - it sounds so harsh and foreign to my ears. I'm barely used to Satchel calling me Mom, though he does tend to slip up now and then. Thankfully he's not quite so militant and focused as the small one.

Oh well, time to introduce this little Mom caller to Mr. Litterbox.