Barbie Is Going To Sue Us

Barbie is going to sue us for punitive damages, I’m sure. You doubt me? Just wait. You’ll see.

Raising three little girls is its own dose of insanity. But doing it while being married to a fireman who is on-duty for at least 48-hours, leaves me as a temporary single mother on a regular basis. Taking into account the fact that my 7-year-old is nicknamed Princess Poots-A-Lot, my 4-year-old is completely tomboy and incredibly clumsy, and my 1-year-old is often found standing on the kitchen table frantically shaking the contents of the salt and pepper shakers to watch the snow fall, it is easy to see why I often search E-bay for properly fitting straight jackets to accompany the shade of padding on my bedroom walls.

As for Barbie’s place in our lives, we have an entire 2 foot by 1.5 foot bin under the girls’ bed. This bin is stuffed to the max with Barbie Dolls, Barbie clothes, Barbie fairies (the winged kind, not the SanFran kind,) Barbie shoes, Barbie handbags, Barbie wedding veils and bouquets, and one very hard Luke Skywalker. I’m still not sure how he made it in there except that this way he can flip the bird to Chewbacca and all his friends in the regular toy box because Good Ol’ Luke knows where the chicks are. Anyways, the Barbie bin is a regular play area for the girls. Last week, a Barbie started appearing around the house, but she was not really being played with. She was quite noticeable, given that this particular Barbie had only one leg. I tried hard to ignore this fact and the reappearing Barbie altogether. I managed this just fine until Tradd came home from work the next day. When he saw the Barbie, he picked it up and asked, “Why does this Barbie have only one leg?” I did the eye roll and a sigh thing and simply left it at that. What could I say? I certainly didn’t rip poor Barbie’s limb from her lifeless little body. Although I did make a mental note that I hadn’t seen the leg anywhere since the one-legged Barbie began popping up all over the house.

Later that day, the girls were digging through the Barbie bin again. Once they got their Barbies dressed appropriately, Storm and Kacy, my 7 and 4-year-olds, started playing with each other and making the Barbies talk, go out on dates, get married, karate chop each other in the throat, etc. Cameron toddled into where Tradd and I were with a couple Barbies and her blanket in hand. It was close to nap time, but she was playing peacefully for a few minutes. Then all hell broke loose. Cameron did her best banshee cry, quickly followed by both Tradd and me doing our rebel yells of “HEYYYYYY!!! What ARE you DOING to her?!!” Kacy’s standard answer these days is a sweet and doe-eyed, innocent, “I was just playing with her.” Yeah, right. Upon further inspection, Tradd saw that in the microseconds that it took Kacy to “just play with her,” she managed to make off with the full-bodied Barbies and leave Cameron with only the one-legged Barbie for playtime. Kacy, of course, didn’t see anything wrong with this, so Tradd and I decided it was intervention time.

Tradd laid out “House Rule # 5,083” for the girls. It clearly states: No child shall rob the baby of any Barbie with all four limbs and replace her with a Barbie in possession of any fewer than four (attached) limbs. What the heck? Is this normal? Do other moms and dads of other all-girl households have to make ground rules like this?  I would like to be optimistic about this and say yes, but I sort of have my doubts. Well, today somebody apparently found Barbie’s leg. I found the one-legged doll on the kitchen table at breakfast, along with her missing limb. This is great news, I thought to myself. My oldest is home sick from school for the 2nd day in a row, I didn’t get near enough sleep over the past few nights, but today is already looking up for me because I sit down to breakfast and am lucky enough to find a one-legged Barbie staring me in the face with her detached limb resting lovingly in her hand. And the sad part is that I really was happy about this. A toy we could fix! Since toy repair is not my department, but that of my Super Gluing Spouse, I left Barbie there for Tradd to find tomorrow.

While I ate and tried to read some of the newspaper, apparently Barbie beckoned to Kacy. Now, that was just dumb, Barbie. Kacy, noticing Barbie’s dilemma, decided that the best course of action was to yank the other leg from her body so that Barbie would at least feel an even balance during the high dive, since the long jump was definitely out of the question. Holy crap! And I had been so happy that Barbie might be whole again soon. I think I did the eye roll-sigh thing again, chugged half my coffee and buried my head in the paper while I waited for the coffee to kick in. After three minutes, I hadn’t managed to read two sentences in the newspaper or finish my breakfast, but the kids were done. Kacy had asked to be excused, scraped her plate, tossed it in the sink and was in the back of the house singing to Dierks Bentley. Cameron was throwing scrambled eggs and sausage at me and attempting to balance her bowl in the window sill beside the high chair just to see if I could get her out of the chair before it fell. I felt like I could at least handle the bowl, so I got it first. After this successful rescue bolstered my confidence a smidgen, I got Cameron, washed her hands and face and she was running in mid-air before I could set her down. When her toes touched the floor, off she went to dance to Dierks Bentley too.

Surprisingly Storm was still at the table. I sat back down to finish eating and saw that my darling angel had her halo on this morning. She was concentrating very hard on screwing Barbie’s leg back into its socket. I praised her efforts then stopped paying attention because limb reattachment is not my specialty. I focused hard on my coffee, eggs and newspaper again. After a little while, Storm proudly said, “There Mom. It’s back on!” She held Barbie up for my inspection. I looked up just in time to see Storm’s jaw drop. “Her other leg is missing too!” Duh. Seriously. Storm had just sat there for several minutes, looking at nothing but the Barbie, holding her in both hands, touching her everywhere, and she never once noticed that both legs were missing? I mean, we did just have a minor anatomy discussion a few weeks ago, so maybe she thought the big hole there just meant this was the anatomically correct Barbie. I don’t know. As we sat staring at the once legless, one-legged Barbie floating in mid-air, the “attached” leg crashed onto the table. Barbie’s body quickly followed suit and Storm was off to dance to the radio too.

Dinner time came and Barbie and both of her legs were still on my table. I carefully wiped the breakfast crumbs away from her black holes because I’m not exactly Henrietta Homemaker with sick kids, a sore throat and a runny nose myself. I then called the kids for dinner and ran through the checklist of things they should have done before getting to the table. As I did this, Storm started pounding out a rhythm on the table with Barbie’s thighs. “Knock it off and go get your clothes off the bathroom floor,” were my specific orders. I guess they weren’t specific enough because Storm took Barbie’s legs with her and carried her clothes, one piece at a time, from the bathroom floor to the laundry basket in her bedroom. That’s all well and good, unless of course you factor in that Barbie’s severed limbs were being used as chopsticks to perform this routine. When Storm returned to the kitchen, shaking a leg at me and laughing at how she did it, I told her she’s twisted. She was behind me doing the fingers in the ears thing and singing “I’m not listening.” I knew she was playing with me, so I whipped around to play back like I was really mad at her, only to discover that instead of her fingers, Barbie’s legs were sticking out of Storm’s ears. And yes, she is on antibiotics for an ear infection right now. I swear I don’t know how these things happen.

The rest of the evening was fairly uneventful, as far as Barbie goes. Barbie and her legs are on the table, waiting like Humpty Dumpty for Tradd to put the pieces back together again. But, as I turned out the lights tonight, I noticed Barbie again. The only problem was, I couldn’t figure out where her head was. What the frick? Now she’s legless and headless? No fear though. As I snatched her up for a closer inspection, I saw that one of the girls just dressed the legs in a ballet outfit. The Barbie body and head were hidden under the still unread newspaper, but the legs looked great in that leotard and skirt. The sad part is that I actually paused for a second to admire Barbie’s legs and wish that I had legs like her, despite their current status of detachment. Barbie obviously never raised three kids. Wench.