What a doll!

How could I forget to write about this? It was so dear! The day before Georgetown's Graduation I had already turned in grades and didn't need to be on campus. So I keep Charlotte home for a special Mommy Daughter day. We snuggled and read stories. I asked her what she would like to do. She wanted to go into work. It did not make a difference that I didn't need to go. She drew on my dry-erase board and colored in a coloring book. We had talked about going to a Chinese Buffet for lunch. (We've recently discovered that Charlotte loves shrimp. Go figure.) I did need to get somethings at a store in Lexington and suggested that we could look for Sammy's birthday gift. So in Target I let her play in the toy aisle. She is always drawn to the baby dolls. She found some miniature ones, maybe six inches tall, and had three of them scooped up in her arms. I've seen her do this before, but it is so sweet the way she cares for and talks to the babies. She loves feeding them and washing them and putting them to bed. "Mommy, I want to get these!" Well, it turned out they were only $3, so I let her use some of her money to buy one. Usually this is a prompt for our children to lose all interest in a toy, but she had that doll with her every second for the next several hours, barely letting it out of her sight for a moment before bedtime.
Peter put her to bed. When he went in to check on her, she was talking to one of her other dolls, an old fav named "Sally".
"Now Sally, she's a new baby, and you're the big sister. You are two and she's only one, so you will have to be careful. She's going to sleep with us tonight. She's only one and you're two, so she might want to snuggle with me, and that's okay. You're two and you're her big sister, and she's only one, so you have to help take care of her...."
She went on like this for some time, gently trying to reassure her older doll and squelch any budding sibling rivalry. :)