[...]I like to browse around the internet, regularly I will go to Stumble Upon and read and check stuff out[...]…

Apsidal – I feel your pride!

Brit Gal Sarah – thank you for the well wishes! I do think you should murmur ‘mum’ under your breath though, just to stay true to your roots.

Brooklyn – I quite like ‘ma’, actually. The Beancounter (one of my recurring cast of characters) often refers to his mother as his ‘diddly old ma’. Given that his mum reads (or at least used to read) this blog, I would just like to take this opportunity to say that she is neither diddly nor indeed old. And once she reads this, she may no longer want to be The Beancounter’s ma, either.

Mel – thanks!

Lisa – look, Ian loves you, but there are some things he’s not willing to do to prove it. And I back him wholeheartedly.

Iota – am not looking forward to Newborn Bingo, but it seems frighteningly unavoidable. And don’t get me started on the screamed ‘maaaaaaaaaaahm’…I hear that QUITE enough as it is!

I’d assumed that the two words sounded very different. Mum rhymes with gum; mom rhymes with bomb. But in the mouths of babes and sucklings standing at the bottom of a staircase and yelling “Maaaaaahm, where AAAARE you?”, they really sound very similar. I haven’t heard a child here say “mom” like bomb at all. Perhaps it’s a Midwest thing.

And now I’ll get right out of your comments box.

Soon you’ll get to play Newborn Bingo, which starts with “just wait till he/she is a teenager, then you’ll think this bit was the easy bit”, and will include frequent references to the fact that you just got to do the easy bit, and sleep deprivation continues to feature a lot too.

I taught my daughter, unintentionally, to say “toe-mahto”. I blame Ian, who, by the way, has never had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before.

This still freaks us out.

Your post refers to “mom” and “mum” used in both the second and third person as in:

Second person: “Mom/mum, have you seen the python I put in my sock drawer and forgot to tell you about.”

Third person: “I’m really angry at my mom/mum; she found the python I brought home and had the police take it away without waiting for me to come home and ask me about it.”

Based on your post, I suppose you would view this following reminiscence with both fascination and horror: When I was growing up, in my neighborhood we all used “Ma” in the first person, but for some reason used the formal “mother” in the third.

So, it could be worse than “Mom” which has a distant relationship with “Mum.”

I had to LOL @ the Hersheys & Football comments – amen to them & Mom! Spare a thought for me, in my role as a school secretary, I have to spew out MOM many times a day!