Junior

Inspirational song: Ooo, Baby Baby (Smokey Robinson)

You know how some people have perfected the art of whispering what they think is the scandalous part of a sentence? Like the aunt at Thanksgiving who talks about her neighbors kid, and then leans in and puts her hand by her mouth and whispers loudly, "...prison," or "...gay," or "...cancer." Turns out Valerie is really good at that trick. I was invited to chauffeur her and her mommy to Target to pick out her own baby doll, so she would give Avery a break from her aggressive expressions of love. (Kid cannot stop patting and kissing her new baby brother.) I got to the house and she said to me, "We are going to Target to get ... Valerie junior!" She did the whole whispering behind her hand and everything. Have I mentioned she is the cutest little girl in town?

We covered most of the store two times over before we got to the toy section. Actually, maybe four times, if you count each of us having a turn walking her to the restrooms at the front of the store. Once we were ready, we went to the aisle with the baby dolls (not the one with the freaky dolls who look like tiny adults) and threw our arms wide and let her pick whichever one appealed to her. She made her selection pretty quickly, so we carefully asked if she was sure, not wanting to make it seem like we were steering her in any direction. She was sure. Then she moved on to looking at other toys, like pretend shopping carts or cash registers, which we had no intention of buying. Her mom also grabbed an accessory pack that matched the brand she chose, with a stroller and whatnot. Later in the day she sent a photo of Dmitri being very mad that he couldn't fit in the baby seat designed for the doll. (I will not post it, because Dmitri wasn't wearing pants, and I don't find that appropriate for me to put online.)

I hope she gets healthy play out of this. We aren't the type to try to assign her gender roles or expectations that only she can play with dolls and her brothers should stick with trucks. If the boys want dolls, we can do the same trip to Target for them, once they're old enough to tell us their choices. It might be a while for Avery. And as was pointed out this evening, Dmitri has had a whole lot of Duplo trains land in his living room lately. He's had plenty of money spent on him this month.