Maña

Mariana has 4 syllables. That can be a mouthful when your mouth is only 18 months old. So Mariana has adopted her friend Chandra's pronunciation. Chandra who is 2 1/2 started calling her Maña (pronounced Manya) because I think it was a little easier for her to say. We thought about Mari or Ana but Maña seems to be the nickname that's sticking. It's how she refers to herself anyway. Here are Maña and Chandra sipping yogurt.

She doesn't like to eat very much. She has a tendency lately to say "all done" as soon as she sits down in fact. Or maybe I should say that she whines it with anguish in her voice. She's in that stage where she'll ask for something to eat, say cereal, then reject it after 1 bite or maybe no bites at all. She can say a lot, but she still can't explain herself. I think half the time she doesn't even know what she wants, just that she don't want to sit in the chair and eat when there are crayons to lick or toy bins to be dumped over. And now that I mention it, she loves to dump over bins. Is it just to make a mess? Seemingly, but then that's the parental way to look at it. To her it could be just another learning experience. I want her to grow up to be a person who cleans up after herself or just as importantly, to know what a mess even is but I want her to learn how to make a mess first.
I get the same feeling watching her color in a coloring book. My hyper anal job makes me want to always color inside the lines. Mariana could care less about the lines already there, wantonly scribbling back and forth just to torture me and poke at my OCD. The truth is that I want her to know the "rules" and then to put them aside and make her own rules.

And thanks for the encouragement folks. Mom's 70th birthday was yesterday and there's already so much to tell her.