Nina

A striking similarity

For a 2 year old, Ava is very good at playing by herself. She's especially interested in her dolls and the Dora dollhouse that we've had since Sophie was her age. It's hard to know exactly what's going on in her games—there's a lot of unintelligible conversation—but one thing is a constant: the dolls, all of them, are named "Nina".  We work downstairs in a dedicated office and throughout the day we hear, "Oh Nina!" or "Nina no!" or just, "Nina!".

We're not sure where it came from. The only person I know named Nina is my massage therapist and Ava has never met her (she doesn't yet need massage). When I was a kid, I called my mother's friend "Joanna" "Apple". It took them a long time, but eventually they realized that I had thought her name was "Banana" and since I couldn't say that, I substituted the next best fruit. 

So lately I've been wondering if "Nina" is not a name at all, but some identifier she's using, her word for "doll" or something. And I'm a tiny bit afraid that we'll realize she's saying something awful that she learned from us like, "not now," or "nimrod," or "numb nuts."