As soon as she said, “You know what would be the most special thing in the world? If I had a handsome boy Barbie for my girl Barbie to play with,” I knew.
I knew we’d be spending the morning scouring the aisles at Toys r Us, instead of taking advantage of the free swimming at the pool. You see, my baby girl has just recently discovered Barbies. Last year, her sister gave her a giant bucket of them. Emily sighed and with a giant “Barbies are for babies” handed them down to her baby sister. But, because we were moving and only taking what we could fit in our minivan (read: not very much) the Barbies have been spending a year in a storage facility in Toronto. We didn’t really give it a second thought. We brought our Littlest Pet Shops and our 447 Melissa & Doug playsets and figured we’d be golden this year.
Until she found a Barbie doll hiding under a bed.
And Isabella has been smitten ever since. She has dragged this hideous purple-and-blue haired thing everywhere. To the pool, to the park, to the dinner table. But, eventually, Barbie got bored. She needed a playmate. She needed to have a little bit more fun. She was tired of not being able to eat real food or actually go in the pool. There are only so many times she can be thrown down a giant slide before she gets a scorching case of vertigo and a serious case of the BOREDS.
So, we bought BOY BARBIE, whose name is Daniel, by the by.
And within thirty minutes, Daniel the boy Barbie swooped in and swept poor Barbie off her weird painted-on greenish boots. They danced, they sang, they kissed, they got married, and they moved in together.
They move fast, apparently.
Pretty soon, though, Daniel the boy Barbie got bored. And started dancing with Princess Ariel from the bedroom closet and Jenny from the (mega)Block(s) (box). Maybe it was Barbie’s giant pink wings or her nonremovable plastic green leotard, but whatever it was, dude got bored and the happy couple is no longer as blissfully happy as they were just hours ago.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think they sold us the wrong Boy Barbie…because he seems like he’s a Don Draper in surfer glasses and (fake) True Religion jeans.
If there’s one thing I know from the soap opera that is going on at our house right now, it’s that Emily was wrong. Barbies are most definitely not for babies.