I haven't lost my mind. There are no new small animals. I am not even vaguely pregnant.
Lily Ruth has a baby doll, and she is in love. I had purposely put off purchasing a doll for Lily because she never seemed all that attached to any of her plush toys, so I kind of figured that she didn't care. I also wanted to see how much of 'doll love' is nature and how much is nurture. Oh, AND my Mama wanted to get her a doll for Christmas... so we waited. Then Lily's friend Henry got a baby sister. From her very first sighting of Lara, she was hooked. She asks to go to their house almost every day. She demands to 'hold' the baby once she is in the door. She sits on my lap with Lara in our laps and softly talks to her.
When the ladies at Parent's Day Out told me that she started asking to keep a doll with her when she naps, that was it. We went out and got a doll that day.
The doll's name is CeeCee (Lucy), and she seems to have become surgically attached to Lily Ruth. I'm serious here, people. Lily Ruth awoke at 3 am recently and instead of demanding 'Urse' (nurse), she shrieked 'BABY!!!!' until I was able to untangle CeeCee from the sheet and hand her over.
CeeCee came into our lives a few weeks ago, and things have changed around here. My never still, never quiet daughter has now developed an affinity for sitting quietly and still in her playhouse and doing things like 'giving the baby water':
and 'shhh-ing the baby to sleep'
Another example of how fierce she is about CeeCee - Lily Ruth recently found herself juggling several tasks (holding the 'baby', drinking from her cup and picking up another toy) and became very frustrated. I decided to step in and offer assistance. 'May I hold Baby CeeCee for you while you pick that up?' I enquired. 'NO!' came the response. Then she let out a HUGE sigh, shifted her load and gave me the 'this is my responsibility' look. I almost keeled over.
Oh, that reminds me - I forgot to tell you about Lily Ruth's new playhouse! It came to us courtesy of Grandpa. He loves Lily Ruth VERY much. He also truly understands the importance of having a space of your very own.
He delivered a giant brown box to our house with 2 very separate things written on the sides. The first is a message from Grandpa:
The second is a mystery communication from the construction site that the box came from:
Hilariously unexplainable, no? Several folks have suggested that I add 'and a partridge in a pear tree' at the end.
At any rate, Lily Ruth ADORES her playhouse. I decorated the outside during her nap the first day that it lived with us.
Then I stripped Lily Ruth down to her diaper and we colored the inside with Mama's special markers - the ones that Lily Ruth is NOT allowed to touch usually. It was awesome... and when I say awesome, I am referring to the amount of marker that adorned Lily Ruth's body :-P Since then, we have added 'furniture' (a Boppy pillow, blankets, a piece of her foam play scape and her aquarium crib soother) and LOTS of foam stickers of sea creatures ('ISH!') and Christmas ornaments ('shiny').
The box is wonderful. It provides my baby girl with a retreat in the middle of our chaos. She can crawl in with her doll and her Sesame Street plush friends and pretend like she's queen of the universe... yet she can keep Mama in sight. I will be just as crushed as Lily Ruth when it finally disintegrates. Thank goodness we know where to get more!
I've been crafting like crazy in order to liberate my creativity and retain my sanity during the wild and wooly holiday season. Unfortunately, since that takes up lots of time, I don't have time to tell you about it right now :-) I kind of look like this these days...
a bit tired, but happy to be here... I will make time to tell you eventually, though... I also need to show you our Christmas tree... oi. Thinking about all of the things I want to document is wearing me out. I'm going to go rest up. TTFN.
Ha, I love the "this is my responsibility" look, how cute! :-D What an awesome box! Great idea!
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