A few days ago I was at Toys R Us buying a birthday present when I came across the toys from the movie Brave. We took Annie to see Brave the day it came out, and she has been obsessed with it ever since…to the point where sometimes she declares that she, in fact, is Princess Merida, and will only answer to that name. So when I saw the toys, I knew getting her something would make her over-the-moon happy. Still, I went back and forth about it until I saw this box:

one for each of us!

If you’re like me you saw that box and thought, “OH! That means we both get dolls!”

I held off giving her the box for three days. When she opened it she screamed like I’ve never heard, then said, “It’s awesome! I looooove it!” For the next two hours, we role played.

playing dolls

Annie, and I cannot say this strongly enough, LOVED THE DOLLS. The best part was how she just sort of understood that the Merida doll was hers, and the Queen Elinor doll was mine. Which was good, because I really wanted my Queen Elinor doll to stay all pretty and perfect. I also secretly hoped that she would keep Merida looking all pretty, but then Annie insisted we take the dolls with us when we ran errands.

Elinor with me at Target

Annie and Merida get Bananas

Annie kept dragging Merida around by the hair, which made me cringe. Her hair was so pretty! I tried to explain this to Annie. She looked at me, nodded, and then said, “Yes mama. We should brush her hair.” Then I shrieked NOOOOOOO and snatched the doll out of Annie’s hand.

Things you should know about me: I’m not bothered by playroom clutter or disorganization. But sticky hands and faces, destroyed toys, and dolls with knotted hair make me batty. I have no idea why, but if you come at me with any of these things, I get all hand-flappy and upset. And of COURSE Annie’s favorite toys require hair brushing. I’ve really been working on not getting worked up about these things because they are stupid and par for the course with toddlers.

So after I snatched the doll out of Annie’s hand I took a deep breath, and then handed it back to her. I did manage to (calmly) encourage her to brush my hair instead of Merida’s (I really took one for the team). But I still felt bad, so I handed over my Elinor doll.

playing with the ladies

I watched Annie play with both of them, making the dolls interact. At one point she started speaking for the dolls. The Elinor doll said, “I love you Merida!” And the Merida doll said, “I love you too Mama!” And then I melted into a puddle of goo and swore to never care about her ruining the hair on her dolls again.

YAY! Dolls!

But just to be clear, I melted into a puddle of non-sticky goo, because sticky is icky.