'B' Day

Today, B stands for binkies and birthdays. And baby dolls.

To say that I am regretting the decision to take Zoey to Toys R Us on her birthday and let her "buy" a new baby doll with her binkie would be something like the biggest understatement of our year so far.

Want to know what time I put her down for her nap today? 12:30 p.m. Want to know what time it is now? 2 p.m. Want to guess who has been in her room for the past hour and a half, alternately hiccup-sobbing and sucking desperately on two fingers from her left hand?

I'll start at the beginning.

This morning started off famously--Zoey was up early, happy to be the Birthday Girl, and even happier to open the presents that have been waiting for her for several days. (Thank you to everyone who sent gifts despite the canceled party!) My Grandma came over, we met Alisa and her kids for donuts, and then it was off to Toys R Us...Zoey getting one last final moment with her binkie in the back seat, all the way to Tacoma.

She was having no part of giving up the bink until we actually hit the inside of the toy store. And once we found the Promised Land of baby doll aisle, she was all for giving up anything, if it meant picking a new doll. Ushering her quickly past the Baby Alive section (boasting a horrid array of dolls with creepy eyes and disgustingly real dirty diapers), we started scanning for a new member of our family made entirely of plastic. Because, in my daughter's eyes, taking that doll in the bath tub with her was going to be the pinnacle of her existence. And then...we saw her. With packaging printed entirely in Spanish, she was the holy grail of baby dolls (if you happen to be Zoey): plastic, complete with her own small bath tub and bottle, sporting her very own runny nose (because on the scale of dolls-with-gross-bodily-fluids, this was at the bottom of the spectrum), and--AND--a nurse's cap, glasses, and syringe, for all those occasions that warrant taking your baby to the doctor's office in the 1940's when nurses actually wore caps. And glasses, apparently.

Spanish baby also carried a price tag of $39.99.

But Zoey was hooked, so this was the baby we chose to go home with. And my daughter, God love her, marched proudly up to the counter where, after scoping the scene for the kindliest cashier I could see, she placed her binkie in a plastic bag and turned it over. Just like that.

She was rewarded with a Geoffery balloon and paper crown, while I was busy being swindled in to buying nine dollars worth of AA batteries. (Because the doll talks, did I mention that? Isn't that neat?) And we were off.

And I am not lying when I tell you it took nearly 10 minutes of cutting, sawing, cursing and pulling to release that freaking doll from the evil clutches of plastic-and-wire packaging.

Zoey was totally thrilled with her new baby for approximately 20 minutes. Then it was time to choose a birthday lunch: Cheerios and peas, because she's weird like that. After lunch, she announced she was ready for bed, although now that we're two hours in to the process of getting her to sleep, I'm wondering if she was just hoping her binkie would be lying there in bed waiting for her the minute she crawled in for a nap.

So, it's looking like the trauma of giving up the binkie is going to be every bit as awful as I had imagined, possibly resulting, in the end, with a finger-sucking habit.

And you can't turn your fingers in for a new baby doll. Or so I hear.