Mini-Mallory

The dollhouse in Mallory's room is in heavy rotation these days, as I'd always hoped it would be. We have an odd assortment of pieces to go with it because it is a vintage Fisher Price Loving Family dollhouse and it's all been scavenged and cobbled together through purchases from eBay and Value Village (including a few right-place-at-the-right-time finds from friends: thanks Megan!) We have one dining table and only two chairs to go with it, but we have four beds and six toilets. This is all fine and well, as the kids love playing with the dolls on the toilets. Who knew?

Anyway, we have a mom and a dad, and a little boy with red hair who is obviously Liam, and this blond girl who then became Mallory. There are also boy-girl twin babies, but let's not get into those. Mallory loves to play with Mallory and the way she plays with Mallory most often is by declaring that Mallory has a poop and needs to be changed. Then she brings Mallory over to me, asks me to take off her clothes, lies her down on the change table and proceeds to change her.

Hey, at least I don't have to do it.

I have been watching Mallory play at this for a while and have been hoping that she would start playing more with Mallory on the toilet and less with Mallory on the change table. That hasn't been happening, but we're not going to let it stop us. The date has been circled on the calendar, and on September 3, Mallory is going to start wearing underpants. Yep, the 7-pack of princess panties that we picked out several months ago is finally going into production. I figure that way we have five days to try to get the hang of things. If I recall correctly, I was pulling my hair out by the end of two days with Liam, though two days was really all it took to get him to catch on... mostly. If Mallory hasn't caught on after five days then it will make going back to work after our time off that much more enticing. I suppose then it will become Cindy's problem (for 8 hours a day, anyway). She certainly works for her money.