Madeline: Something is not right... with my head and the book.

After two years with house full of boys (hubs and The Boy), I was glad to be able to finally splurge on girly things when my Baby Girl arrived. So while my baby girl was only six months old I was debating whether I should let her play with Barbies or not. Yes, I CAN be that kind of a mom.

Though I'm tough-ish I really enjoyed playing with fashion dolls as a child. I liked playing with the hair, making clothes for it, accessorizing it, rearranging the furniture. Boy! Did I love my Barbie's Dream House (the pink and yellow A frame house, it was so awesome). But now that I am older I don't like the way Barbie looks. Too plasticky, too... grownup looking. What to do?! I wondered. Surely, creating your fantasy world is awesome for children, surely, using your skills to make your own clothes, pretending, managing, is good for children, but... Barbie?! Yuck.

So I contemplated Cabbage Patch dolls (and I'm really, really sorry to say and I may offend some people, but they are just so ugly!) and then I remembered Madeline and Friends dolls. I vaguely remember seeing them long, long time ago in stores, but I found them online on eBay. It was so cute, and so wholesome looking that I had to bid on it. And I won, for $.99!

Baby Girl triumphantly holding her "new" Nicole doll.

She looks like a bunny, doesn't she?

Then I thought, well, she can't have just one doll, she'll need friends! What if Baby Girl invites friends and there no extra dolls to play with?!

Nicole is joined by her friends:
(L-R) Nicole, Madeline, Danielle, Pepito/Pepita, Chloe

...Then I thought, well... she needs accessories, because Barbie's things won't be compatible since these dolls are 8" tall...

Madeline and Friends and "an old house in Paris that was covered in vine".
See the long haired blondie cooking in the kitchen on the bottom left? Yeah, that's Nona (don't worry, I did not pay that much).

So in the storage just waiting for Baby Girl to be ready is a collection of Madeline and Friends. I hope she loves it.

Through my crazy Madeline and Friends phase the Boy learned to love Madeline too, so I bought some Madeline DVDs and he loves the sweet cartoon and sings the theme song: I'm Madeline, I'm Madeline~. Hubs cringes whenever he hears the Boy singing that song.

We also have every Madeline books, but every time I read Madeline I always wonder:

Something is not right. Why are there twelve little girls after Madeline's appendix surgery?!

Why such an oversight?

Also, who is this man that appears four times through out the book?

What is the significance of this man?

Sometimes I hypothesize that he is:

• the local town drunkard
• the author, himself