A couple weeks ago I was being pretty braggadocious about how cute my 2-year-old was. She’d just fallen in love with Dora the Explorer – or “Dora Bora,” as she says – and fell especially hard for the monkey, Boots. If this were study hall, Abby’d have “Boots 4-EVER” on her notebook, I was saying.  Everything became Boots. The stuffed animal monkey in her bed? Boots. The dog? Boots.

Then, it morphed into her: “I Boots, Mama,” she declared. One hand cocked on her hip, the other fanned out on her chest. “I Boots.”

Two weeks later, her obsession has stopped being so cute. Actually, uh, I’m not really sure what to do with this latest development.

“Morning, Abby.”

“No, I Boots,” she says, swinging her legs out of bed.

“Abby, let’s brush your teeth.”

“I Boots. Boots brush MY teeth.” Uh, grammatically that’s ridiculous, but I’ll work on that later.

I tried putting my foot down. “You’re ABBY, and you’re pretending to be Boots.”

“No, I Boots. I not Abby, I Boots.”

Yep, heard that rumor.

Next I attempted to ignoring it. She said Boots, I said nothing, revealed no smile or frown. She didn’t seem to notice.

I just keep thinking: Her dad and I spent months – literally months – saying baby names aloud, shortening them and concocting all possible nicknames we couldn’t live with. I did the schoolyard “Banana Fanana Fo-Fanna” song to each name and carefully, ever so purposefully we chose “Abby.” Short, sweet. What’s the worst a kid could nickname her? Abs? Beats nicknames that sound like other body parts.

But I didn’t see Boots coming. I didn’t forsee her choosing her own nickname at 2 ½ … from a cartoon.

This is what I get for turning to Dora during that 10-hour car ride last month, you know. This is karma. And, hey, at least she stopped calling her sister Map (Dora’s ever-so-helpful, well, uh, map).