Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Piper vs. Emily

Before I get to the story of Piper vs. Emily, here's a quick little photo show of Caroline's new dress for her American Girl doll, Emily.  I've been friends on Facebook for about a year with a woman that used to babysit my siblings and me when I was a kid.  I haven't seen her in over 20 years and we just had a little contact when we reconnected. Well, out of the blue a couple of weeks ago, she sent me a message and asked if she could make Caroline's AG doll a dress.  How thoughtful?!?!  So just this week, this beautiful, sparkly, red design arrived in the mail.  I was just blown away - at both the generosity and the dress!  The fabric is so festive and the skirt is so full.  Caroline was thrilled and we ran upstairs to dress her and take some photos to thank Ms. Pat. Apparently, she used to make a lot of clothes for her granddaughter's dolls when she was younger and couldn't resist an opportunity to make some more. Such a kind and thoughtful gesture!!

So, back to my title.....Piper vs. Emily.  It really should be Piper & Rat Spray vs. Emily.  Poor Emily.  In the stories I've told in the past, I've talked about how much Piper likes beauty products.  Lotions, shampoos, sprays, etc.  She loves when I paint her nails, rub lotion on her or any other kind of girly thing.  She has a special love for "rat spray" (e.g. tangle spray or spray in conditioner spray).  She LOVES the stuff and always thinks she needs some, even before bed.  And to her credit, she generally DOES need some all the time because Piper seems to always have a big old rat's nest in the back of her hair.

Well on Tuesday evening before I got home from work and just as my MIL was leaving, Jason heard Piper up in our bathroom.  Unless they are actually using the bathroom, they really have no need to be in there so he went up to investigate.  And there she was, with a CUP of rat spray and Emily was all wet.  Her hair was pretty well saturated underneath and parts of her body were pretty wet too.  We have no idea why she had poured some of the spray into a paper cup, but clearly she had something in mind to do to Emily's hair.

When I got home and surveyed the damage I was surprised how wet the hair and body was.  I did a little internet searching and found that AG doesn't advise washing the doll's hair any longer but there were lots of websites telling you how to do it.  AG did say it was okay to use some leave-in conditioner in the doll's hair though so I figured a little of that wouldn't hurt....well, a LOT of that.   So I took Emily and blow dried her hair on the cool setting and brushed it out - her hair looked perfect again.  However her body has some other battle scars because when Piper went to work on her, Emily was still wearing her new red dress.  New red dress + wetness = pink spots all over Emily's body.  I blow dried Emily's body on the cool setting too and thankfully the spots dried much lighter than they were wet, but there are still some pink splotches visible.  I didn't point them out to Caroline because I didn't want to make her any angrier at Piper than she already was.  Then I stood Emily up in her doll stand without clothes on so that she could completely dry out and she seems to be fine now.

Every time I think Piper is through with her beauty product meddling, she'll do something else.  I think I just have to get used to the fact that Piper will ALWAYS be getting into something - that's just the kind of kid she is!

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