Edie has become more interested in her Barbies in the past several months, and I must say that the Barbie abode — which, as I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, lives in our hallway because it’s too big to go in her room — is becoming increasingly cramped. It’s quite the flophouse, actually.

The original Barbie and Ken who occupied it made a rather strikingly odd couple: A pink ballerina Barbie with a bum leg that falls off all the time, so Terry has taken to calling her Heather Mills (I know, I know — it’s rude, but you have to admit, it’s kinda funny) and “Surfer Ken,” who, unlike the Ken dolls I knew in my own youth, with hair that was really just part of the molded plastic shape of their heads, actually has real “hair,” which, when he was fresh from the box was kind of pasted down and crusty and hard, but in the months of lounging around the Barbie house (most often with his clothes off, but more on that later) have caused his hair to grow larger and larger in volume, which, I suppose is not unsuited to his surfer appeal, perhaps. He is tan and buff, as Ken should be. He came with a pair of swim trunks and a Hawaiian floral shirt, and most of the time I find Ken’s shirt lying in another room, and Ken himself with his pants down.

As an aside, what is it with kids and dolls that have clothes? Every kid I know does that, takes the clothes off their dolls. I remember doing it to my OWN dolls when I was a kid. Weird.

Anyway, shortly after Pink Ballerina Barbie and Surfer Ken moved into the Barbie house, another doll arrived: Beach Glam Barbie. She’s hot, with a sexy bikini and freshly tousled hair and the look of a coquette. I’m sure Pink Ballerina Barbie didn’t anticipate having to compete for Ken’s affections, but the three seemed to live fairly amicably for a time, most often, of course, unclothed. (And often one-legged, in Pink Ballerina Barbie’s case.) And then came Theresa — or, as Edie likes to call her, “Blue Barbie.” She’s the brunette version of the ballerina Barbie, so she has a blue ballerina dress and her legs are blue (I imagine they’re supposed to be blue tights), which is, as you can imagine, a little odd when you want her to wear something other than the tutu.

And these four — Pink Barbie, Blue Barbie, Beach Barbie and Ken — lived a rather quiet, if crowded, life in the three-story Barbie house. Which, by the way, only has one bed — and it’s a twin. Wonder what their sleeping arrangements are?

Yesterday, for Edie’s birthday, a few more Barbies moved in! And a pink Barbie car! (Now the Barbies have wheels, so they can escape the harem once in a while. It’s starting to feel a little like a fundamentalist sect or something.) So there’s now a Bride Barbie, with hair that looks like a giant sausage and a gaudy light-up engagement ring, and there’s also Mariposa, the Butterfly Fairy Barbie with removable wings. When she doesn’t wear her wings, she’s not so bad, but man — she can’t even get through the door with those things on. And she takes up ALL the room on the couch. And then there is the Ariel the Little Mermaid doll — not technically a Barbie, but definitely right up there in size and stature. Her only downside is, of course, that she doesn’t actually have legs, so she pretty much does a lot of laying around in the Barbie house, when she’s not living in our bathtub.

Recently (before the arrival of Bride Barbie, Mariposa, and Ariel) we were going somewhere, and Edie asked if she could bring something along with her in the car. She appeared with the three girl Barbies — Pink Barbie, Blue Barbie and Beach Barbie — but no Ken.

As we were driving, I asked her, “So Edie, where’s Ken?”

“Oh, he’s back at the Barbie house.”

“He’s all by himself? Poor Ken. Who will be there to keep him company?”

And I swear she almost sneered just a little bit when she said, very matter-of-factly, “Ken can take care of himself.”

Dear Edie,

This morning I woke up, for reasons unknown, at 5:30 in the morning. As you and I both know, I NEVER do that — well, not never, obviously, but rarely at least — and the first thing that came into my mind as I slowly became aware of being conscious was that it’s TODAY. It’s your birthday.

You have been looking forward to your birthday for quite some time now, asking me nearly every day for the past several weeks, “Mama, is it my birthday yet?” And then when I’d tell you no, not yet, you’d say with your little impish grin, “Well, let’s PRETEND it’s my birthday. You sing the birthday song, Mama.” And I would do as I was told, and sing the birthday song, only I modified it and sang it: “Happy pretend birthday to you… Happy pretend birthday to you…” etc., which you found endlessly funny.

You have gone through so many wonderful changes and milestones, even in just the last few months. You are so funny and curious and sweet. One of the cutest things you do just started perhaps a month ago, and it has to do with the bedtime ritual, which I know I write about often. You always ask for the same song — “Baby of Mine” — but lately when that’s done, then you say, “Let’s sing OUR song, Mama.” And I’m not really sure how we decided it was “our” song, but it’s the one that I THINK is from Barney, but I’m not sure where I learned it, since we don’t watch the show with the evil purple dinosaur. It goes like this:

“I love you. You love me. We’re a happy family. With a great big hug—” (insert BIG squeezy hug here while we’re singing—”and a kiss from me to you,” (insert a sweet kiss, mid-song) — “Won’t you say you love me too?” And after we sing it you give me one or two more big squeezes and kisses and say, “I love you mama.”

You have begun to know real fear lately, which has been interesting and frustrating. Recently you developed a completely irrational fear or the mountains. When we’re driving, if you can see landscape in front of our car that appears to be sort of mountainous, you start kind of freaking out and saying, “I don’t WANT to go to the mountains! I’m afraid of the mountains!” And this refrain would go on and on and get louder and louder until, say, I turned a corner and now it no longer looks “mountainy.” And then you’re totally fine. Weird girl.

And the last two or three times you’ve been out to Disneyland, whether with me or with Jacquie and Honey, you don’t want to go on any rides, even the ones you’ve been riding — and loving — since you were practically a baby. On the last outing to the Magic Kingdom, the only thing you would go on was the King Arthur Carousel, but you cried and complained that your horse was too high.

You are so very girly, too. You love shoes and your favorite color is pink. You HATE to have your hair brushed (since it’s usually a tangly mess in the morning when you wake up) but you LOVE to have it look cute, so you do, in the end, suffer a little for beauty. You love to come in the bathroom with me when I’m putting on makeup. You once asked me what all that stuff was for, and I made the mistake of saying, “It makes mommy pretty,” to which you replied, “I want to be pretty, too.”

So now you ask me every time I’m putting makeup on if I can put some on you, too. I usually dust my big powder duster across your nose, which tickles you and makes you laugh, and then you look in the mirror to see how you look. In the beginning this was enough “makeup” to appease you, but now you are asking me if you can try every single product, and I have to tell you no, which of course does not always sit well with you.

I sometimes worry about silly things, like whether I shouldn’t cater to your vanity so much. Because you ARE very pretty and sweet… but in my secret heart I know that I want you to grow up to be the SMART girl, the girl with the good head on her shoulders. The girl who sets her goals and aims high — so high. The girl who aspires and dreams big — so big. The girl who knows she can do anything.

That’s what I want for you most of all, baby girl. Happy birthday.

Love, Mama

Color week continues. Since I hopped on the bandwagon so late, here’s hoping we continue it next week!

Decided to jump on the Color Week bandwagon a little late in the game this week, via Andrea over at Hula Seventy. Like her, I am also a girl who needs a project. And her projects are pretty darn cool.

“Mama, when am I gonna be a baby again?”

“You won’t ever be a baby again.”

“Awww… why not?”

“Because you can only grow and get bigger. You can’t get smaller and be a baby again.”

“Yeah, and when I’m growed I’ll be more bigger than you! And I can reach things!”

“Yes. Reaching things is important.”

“And pretty soon, I’m gonna be even more bigger than my brother.” (It should be pointed out that she pronounces it “brudder.”) “Mama? Am I five yet?” (Holds out five fingers, spread wide.)

“Nope. Just turning three.” Her eyes shine up at me in the darkness, and I feel a poignant stab. The baby is a baby no longer.

There’s been a serious lull in my blogging of late, and for that I apologize. I have no one single excuse for my lack of entries, but rather many smallish excuses that, when taken on their own don’t seem to merit an inability to sit down and post.

One is that Edie’s birthday is coming up, so I am spending lots of time thinking about that milestone, and doing what I can to help Terry in getting the patio and yard cleaned up in anticipation of the little party we are having here next Sunday in her honor.

Related to the above is that I took a little knitting break after I had my surgery, and find myself down to a week before Edie’s birthday, and the tea set is not quite finished. So each evening I’ve been sitting down to watch a little TV and knit a saucer or a teaspoon or a cup. There are only a few miscellaneous items left for me to finish, and I’m down to the wire. I have no doubt I’ll get it finished, but I still need to go on the hunt for a cute basket to put it all in, and (if I have the time) I’d like to line the basket with cute pink fabric. (To match the pink and white tea set, natch.)

Among the myriad of things I tape on our DVR throughout the week, I have also been making the time to re-watch the entire series of Sex and the City on DVD. Ordinarily I would wait until summertime (when there is no really good programming on regular TV) to undertake a series commitment of this magnitude (there were six seasons, after all; I’m currently in the middle of Season 2), but in anticipation of the movie coming out at the end of May, I decided a current re-watch was in order. I have not been disappointed. And with episodes being just a half-hour each, I can watch sometimes up to 5 or 6 episodes in an evening. (Though my average is 4.)

Another is that we are having such strange extremes of weather, and on days like today, when it’s nearly 100 degrees out (in April, mind you) I just simply don’t have the energy to do anything more creative than pick my nose while trying to keep cool.

Still another (a positive one, actually) is that ever since my piano appeared in Family Circle magazine, I have actually REALLY begun to make the effort to play her. I have surprised myself by actually remembering how to play — and after my first few lumbering efforts at reading music again, it’s like a little nob turned in my brain and went “click!” and it’s all coming back to me now. Don’t get me wrong — I’m no prodigy. But I’m truly enjoying taking 20 or 30 minutes out of my day (sometimes more, sometimes less) to actually sit and play a song over and over until I get it right. Terry said to me tonight that my playing was getting really good.

I’m also doing a lot of reading — finally read Rob’s book (wonderful, as I knew it would be), and am in the midst of reading Rebecca’s, which is also fantastic, plus a couple others on my bookshelf that I return to. I tend to do that, read more than one book at a time. 

All that and a myriad of other miscellaneous things keep me busy but not really anything interesting enough to blog about. Meh. (Shrug of the shoulders.) So if you’ll excuse me, I have some teaspoons to knit and some Sex and the City to watch. Ta!