Greta's Babies

Since late Summer, Greta has been increasingly fond of pretending. At the center of all of her pretend scenarios the following items must be present: a purse, some keys, a mode of transportation (car, stroller, or grocery buggie) and a BABY. Sometimes the baby is a stuffed animal and sometimes it's a doll. Recently, she has wanted to do more with her babies than we are able. For instance, she wants to change their clothes, put on their shoes, and give them milk or apple juice. Over the weekend we engineered these Kleenex shoes for this baby and gave her milk out of a "bottle" which was really just a rock from the drive way. But today, I ditched creativity and opted for a new baby doll complete with clothes, diaper, shoes, hat, bib, pacifier, and the best of all: the disappearing milk bottle and orange juice sippy cup! I bought the baby on my lunch hour and had it in a bag in the front seat of the car when I picked Greta up from school. Greta happend to see it when I was putting her in her carseat, and she would not rest until she had that baby. So I sat in the back seat of the car with her and took the baby out of her packaging. If you've bought a child's toy recently, you know that this is no small task. After a few minutes of painstakingly removing the jillion twist ties holding the baby and all her accoutrements to the cardbox package, I got her free. The whole time I was liberating the doll, Greta kept clapping her hands and giggling and laughing and saying, "Thank you, mama, thank you, mama, thank you, mama!" The sweetest thing about Greta right now is the genuine joy that little things bring her. She's not yet into brand recognition, keeping up with the Joneses, the latest fad, or whether her doll does what the doll on the commercial does. She just loves. Period. I almost wrecked all the way home watching her in the rearview mirror as she kissed, tickled, fed, and snuggled her new baby. Here she is now at 10:37 pm sleeping with her new friend. I love this little girl.