a doll story, a Finn story

I just deleted about thirty-five blurry, barely recognizable photos from my phone.

There were at least twenty more that I sent packing because they were basically a picture of darkness.  (Not nearly as poetic as it sounds.  Just – literally – a picture of nothing.)

Piper Finn and Otto asked to borrow my phone to take photos of Piper’s pal, her doll.

I think they were inspired by their siblings’ earlier forays into artistic photography.

Out of the barrage of blurry and unusable images, I did get a handful of cute savers.

(All photos taken today were taken by a three and a five year old.  You’ll know who took which one by the subject.  If Piper is featured, it’s Otto’s handiwork.  And vice versa.  Naturally.)

When I was a kid, I loved to play with dolls.  My favorite was a pretty disturbingly realistic creation I named Noelle.  I pierced her hard plastic ears.  I tried to get out of doing my kid chores by telling my dad that Noelle needed a diaper change.

Mosely and London enjoy some occasional doll play, but Piper Finn is much more enthusiastic and frequent in her doll games.

Her favorite doll is the one featured here today and her name is Maggie Aggie.  (Yes.  The whole thing.  Maggie Aggie.)

I let Maggie Aggie accompany us to the grocery store the other day.  (I like to think I said yes in honor of all the times my mother said yes to my gruesome dolls tagging along on all kinds of excursions.)

Like so many rites of passage, I’ll probably sigh more deeply than Piper will when Maggie Aggie is discarded in the future for some other bigger kid fascination.  (That phenomena might explain why my mom, who was a thrower-away by nature, saved all of my dolls in a box in the attic.  All of them.  Noelle, Laurie, Thurman, Chelsea, Rennie.)

When I was washing dishes, Piper Finn came running up to my side.

“Mommy – can you tell me about Hanukkah?  We don’t celebrate that, right?”

So I explained the holiday and the whole time she was nodding knowledgeably, as if she already understood the entire concept.

“Right,” she said.  “I know, because Maggie Aggie is Jewish.”