American Girl

Growing up in Sweden I can't say that I grew up playing with American Girl dolls. But something about them intrigued me and so when the first catalog arrived a few years ago Katie and I poured over it together and that was it for us. Instant love. Santa came through and delivered her first doll, Elizabeth on Christmas morning. Elizabeth went everywhere with her and the sight of my four year old daughter without her was rarer than an up close, non disputed picture of Big Foot. But after about a year or so something happened. Elizabeth spent most of her time head down in one of the toy basket and I chalked it up to (expensive) lesson learned. Cut to last year. One day Elizabeth was back again. No explanation. Back came the catalogs but now she was also devouring the books and when you would walk past her room you could see her reading intently with her doll right next to her and my heart melted. Elizabeth was joined by a Just Like Me doll that was eventually named Emily last Christmas Eve.

One evening we were snuggled up together, talking about anything and everything, when she blurted out... "I wish we could have a mommy Katie trip. You know,  just you and me oh... and Elizabeth". After some intense brainstorming we decided on making a weekend trip to a city with an American Girl store. We were maybe a week or so in the planning stages when an email showed up in my inbox.         An American Girl store was coming to Washington! 

New plans were in order. After stalking the AG website for weeks I decided to call the reservations line to see what was going on. In one of those rare instances of just sheer happenstance, they had just opened up the reservations an hour earlier. Score! I rattled off my information and we had our reservations. July 16th, which gives us months to plan the rest of our fabulous Mommy and Katie weekend. I don't know who is more excited, Katie or me? Because I know the times when she will want to spend a whole weekend with just me are slowly ticking away. Soon I will be embarrassing and I "won't understand". But for now. I have a date with my best girl and for that... thank you American Girl.