playing with baby dolls

Suzanne... Charlotte Claire tries on baby Camille's dress...

Suzanne loves her baby....

Charlotte decided to change into this nice winter top, backwards is nice....she takes good care of her baby....

This is what Evelyn Joy thinks she is bringing to the graduation party today.....and you know what ? I'll probably let her....

This is Charlotte Claire's new birthday pram...

Jonny was telling me that his baby is a little newborn.....he is so sincere. And he is using all my diapers....as long as he doesn't put them in the garbage, I can still use them for Camille.

Kathryn Grace with her favorite baby, Julie.....

That's what they have been doing here....and don't think for a second that Jon is left out, no he has his baby too.....Charlotte Claire likes to abscond the nearest baby doll and run away, no matter which of the kids is playing with it...the strollers they have are always more appealing to her than the one she has....and she has a nice one....Suzanne has a dolly that can go in the tub (rarer these days of cheap cloth bodied dolls), and she likes to take it in the pool with her....I am not only a stroller/carriage maniac, I am a doll stroller/carriage maniac....I haven't counted lately, but we have at least 15. We threw out a few bent and broken ones a few months ago, and I truly felt pain. Evelyn has a nice Graco that looks real, and we have 4 that are little bouncy prams,....anyway....they like the little toy car-seats, too. We have way way too many toys, but I guess we have way way too many kids, too, so it balances. They play with the toys...Sometimes they go in streaks where it's playing office, they set up their stuff in the foyer.....pencils, notebooks, calclulators, desks....then it's store, with 3 or 4 toy cash registers, and raiding the cupboard for things to buy....they get out a bunch of bags, and the Little Tikes shopping cart that deserves an award for surviving over 22 years with us....and for days, I find these shopping bags filled with all their purchases....sometimes they even raid the bookshelves....and they play library....I love to see them play, but when they're finished and the upheavel that's left behind....I sometimes wish I had stopped them sooner....Then sometimes they play dollhouse, which we have literally bins and bins of....and 5 or 6 dollhouses....they spread it all over the living room....I have a closet full of Little People stuff from the seventies and eighties, when the little people were still little (and chokable, apparently)....and the barn, airport, McDonalds, gas station, A-frames, houses, ect. ect....sometimes we take all this stuff out.....or sometimes it's waffle-town, or duplos....

How can I get anything done when these guys are so much fun? If it didn't take so long to download pictures, I'd put up some more - our living room is being transformed right before my eyes: several little apartments....I'll spare you the details, but I want to play too! Charlotte just moves in with whoever she wants...

Well, laundry calls....we don't have a Sunday meeting today because of the band weekend, where Paul and the older kids are.....I'm trying not to listen to my reasonable side, that's screaming, "Enough, you won't co-operate to get this stuff picked back up, so stop getting more out!!" (all the doll stuff, I mean....) So, I choose to let them play and burn the clean-up bridge when we come to it.....