Barbies not Babies

A friend of ours just gave my daughter her first Barbie.

Up until now Leila's toys have been over-sized and educational, and as I sat there stabbing the 57 plastic twist-ties and ridiculous amounts of super-strength tape with a knife like a madwoman to release the long-legged icon from her packaging, I couldn't help but reflect on how much of a "Big Girl" Leila really is now. She hasn't used a diaper in a year and a half.  She tells me (demands) what she wants to eat, she knows what shows she wants to watch (and when she wants to watch them), she challenges everything I say (i.e. "Leila, don't stand on the arm of the chair because you might fall" "No, I won't!") and she has a crazy imagination and comes up with things that I didn't even know she knew. So as I ripped open the last piece of plastic with my teeth and handed her the doll I thought to myself "This is it."  Now it's fashion and training bras and boys and attitudes...wait, she already gives me the attitude. Regardless, I was a little sad to look at my baby with her new Barbie and know that she is, in fact, not a baby. But she will, of course, always be my baby. And just then she looked back at me with her Barbie in hand and said, "Look, Mommy, she has boobies!"