A Girl and her Doll Ball

The night after Elise was born I was scouring the internet for the perfect welcome-to-the-world gift. You see, all of our children get a gift from us (besides life, I mean) when they're born. Jack got a big softer-than-anything-in-the-world bear before we even knew he existed. Wes's Rodney reindeer was sitting comfortably in the crib weeks before he arrived. But no special toy had been acquired for our sweet baby girl. Not for lack of effort. We just hadn't found that one perfect gift yet.

Then I happened upon a well known blog and on said blog a little doll was being given away. The doll was ADORABLE and the absolute perfect most special gift we could have ever found for our little Elise. Well, almost. It was way out of the never-specifically-determined-but-intuitively-known price range. But, oh...I, I mean, she needed one of those dolls. To make a long story not quite so long, we ended up getting her one of the dolls as a combined gift for her birth and first birthday.

We were so excited to give her her first baby doll. I imagined her snuggling it, dragging it with her as she scooted all over the house, sleeping with it, never letting it leave her side.

Instead, the baby doll is often left lying alone on the floor after I've tired of forcing Elise to play with it,

while Elise "snuggles" with her blue spikey ball.

Sigh. I guess that's one of the dangers of having two big brothers.