Miss Opinionated

It was inevitable. Yet it happened a little sooner than I expected or hoped. Esperanza, my little fire ball, is opinionated. Very opinionated. On so many different levels. One example is her clothing. I can no longer pick out an outfit for her to wear without it becoming a battle. She has her favorite articles of clothing. Some of them go together well, some of them don't. She likes to pair things that I wouldn't. But, it usually isn't worth the effort to convince her my style is better than hers. So, as long as what she's chosen is weather appropriate, I let her make part of the decision on what she wears each day. It's usually a compromise. This is the result of yesterdays compromise.

An oversized t-shirt with a blue horse on it, blue pants and pink light up princess boots.Cute? Of course! Arguabley cuter than the outfit I had picked out for her.

Esperanza loves animals and her obsession with the color blue is only becoming more and more dominant. If an item of clothiing happens to have a blue animal on it, like that handy-down shirt pictured above (thank you Geneva & Anycia - I can barely get it off of her), it's a sure winner. Anytime I am shopping for clothes for her, I look for things in any shade of blue. Sometimes I can get away with a greenish blue. Otherwise, I risk buying something and her not wearing it, which has already happened several times. Currently, I'm on the look out for a blue winter coat, blue stretch pants and blue boots. Used, cheap and preferably from the girls section, but thats just me being opinionated, I'm sure Esperanza wouldn't care. For Halloween, we're considering cookie monster, smurf or a blue cat.

Oh, and don't forget that hair. It's a mess! It keeps getter longer and longer and longer. I'll admit, on days that we plan to just stay home, I sometimes opt out of brushing it. Yes, it makes the next days hair combing process that much harder, but so worth it. Esperanza really wants me to cut it. I think she's serious, so I'm considering it. On this such day, we hadn't planned on leaving the house, but then Grandma showed up for a very brief visit and I suggested she take Esperanza home with her. Off she went, ratty hair and silly outfit. When I picked her up a few hours later this is what I found...

The outfit just got 10x better and Grandma did the horrid hair task. If I had suggested a yellow dress with pink polka dots over an already questionable outfit (which I never would) she'd have turned her chin up and ran away from me. Because of Esperanza's firey attitude and opinionated personality, I'm quickly learning that the less rules I have, the easier life is for everyone. I kind of feel rebelious allowing Esperanza to do things I instinctually would never consider. All I do when she asks for something, before saying no, is to think of a good reason why not? Amazingly, most things she wants to do are harmless and I can't come up with a good reason to say no...so I've been saying YES a lot more often. Some examples:

"So, you wanna take the paper off of every single crayon, go for it! And break them into two? Great, you'll have twice as many crayons."

"You want blue nail polish huh? Well go grab a blue washable crayola marker and paint those nails blue!"

"Go ahead, drink the bath water after I've just washed both you and your brother in it."

"You don't have to use a spoon if you don't want, go ahead and drink your yogurt out of the container."

The other day I sent Esperanza outside because she wanted to sing very, very loudly in a playful, yet 'not so indoorsy' tone. While she was out there, I heard our neighbor girl ask Esperanza if she would be quiet. Twice. Esperanza didn't stop & I just laughed.

Of course some rules stay. I have things that I don't want broken or ruined, nobody should get hurt & there are a few 'baby' rules she has to follow. The house, clothes and bodies can always be cleaned. Hopefully my relaxed attitude about this will keep us happily entertained this fall/winter.
Before I end my opinionated review on Esperanza, I have to share a little conversation we had the other night.

I was sitting down nursing Ezra and asked Esperanza if she would go get me a glass of water. She said "say por favor mama". I smiled at her and said "por favor". She ran down the hall, stopped halfway, ran back and said "say por favor ______________ agua". I was speachless. I didn't know what she said, or what she wanted me to say because she said it in Spanish and I only understood the first and the last word. I stared at her confused, on the verge of laughter. Instead of laughing, I responded with "por favor get me some agua". That worked and I got my glass of water.

Guess what shirt is under that blue sweater?