Terms of endearment are a personal thing.  Sometimes you don’t have a lot of influence over what comes out of your mouth when you see the object of your affection.  How many people have held their child in their arms or looked at them from afar and have called them ‘monkey’ or ‘peanut’ or ‘pookie’?  Do they really mean that their child eats bugs off others, slings poop, and screeches all the time (in some instances that might be closer to the truth than anyone would like to contemplate); or is a legume that comes out of the ground and can cause severe allergic reactions in others; or… whatever a ‘pookie’ is?   Then there is the array of names for your significant other: all the ones that reference sweet things, expressions of their attractiveness to you, ones that represent the feelings you have for them, and the unexplainable, like ‘pookie’.  The one I really don’t get is ‘baby’.  I know what a baby is, I had four of them.  I was called a ‘baby’ in elementary school and I know it wasn’t meant to be flattering.  So how come it is a standard term of endearment?  Sure babies are cute, cuddly, and lovable but they also can’t do anything for themselves and are frequently peeing, pooping, barfing, drooling, or crying.  Even though I had four of my own, I will quickly hand anyone else’s baby off if any of those events occur.  Not endearing traits.  Going with the idea that ‘baby’ could just represent the positives of baby-ness, I can see (this is a big stretch for me) it being applied to someone cute, bubbly, and more than likely female.  I was challenged recently when ‘baby’ was used in a book I am reading that has two men romantically involved.  Its use crashed me out of the flow of the narrative, and into ‘Really? You couldn’t think of anything better than that?’ realm of thought.  I went from being hooked to disengaged from its application.  Its use made what was happening less believable because the characters, as they had been portrayed, did not seem to be the ‘baby’ uttering type.  Maybe it is just me.  I will admit I might not be the best gauge for great terms of endearment, as ‘poophead’ is one of the standards here.