Yesterday ended with a reminder about the importance of my eldest’s dolly entourage.

I’ve posted about them before, but in case you are a visual sort of person, here’s the collage:

Yes. She has already acquired quite the collection. AND she never leaves home without at least two of them.

The problem last night?

She came home with just one.

It was pure dolly drama.

It was late – almost 10:00pm.

We were on our way home from a nice Mother’s Day dinner at my parents place (we’re cooking for my mom next week so we both get a cooked meal treat).

After being wined and dined I was tired. And done.

And then my eldest realized she’d forgotten one of her dolls at Granny and Grandpa’s.

And all Hell broke loose.

“Turn right around and get her now!” screamed my five-year-old after completing a quick inspection of the car and realizing said doll was, indeed, absent.

“Huh? What’s wrong?”, replied exhausted me.

“My doll! I left my doll! I NEED MY DOLL!”

“Which doll?” For the life of me I couldn’t even remember which ones had joined us for Mother’s Day dinner.

“THE BLUE ONE!”

A quick look at the collage above will demonstrate how helpful THAT description was.

A quick look at my daughter summarized how COMPLETELY INDIGNANT she was that I didn’t know EXACTLY which one she was talking about and wasn’t already heading back to my parents’ place to go get it.

My husband ushered our screaming five-year-old quickly into the house and started getting her ready for bed while I called my parents to see if they had it.

Our two-year-old could have been juggling knives during all this for all the attention we were paying her.

“You left a doll here,” my mother helpfully said upon picking up the phone. Zero preamble. She raised me, after all. And could probably here my five-year-old’s screams from their place.

“Oh good. Which one is it?”

“The fake Barbie we got at the garage sale two years ago in the blue whose head keeps coming off.”

Ah. And for the record – NOT one of the blue ones in the entourage photo above. Whole other blue dolly.

“I’ll return it tomorrow on the way to aerobics. Does that work?”

“Fabulous! Thanks. I can tell your grand-daughter….”

“That she’s sleeping over and helping me clean up because she’s a responsible and helpful dolly,” finished my mother.

“Brilliant,” I replied heading to my daughter’s room (where she was still in tears and being consoled by my husband). “I’m putting you on speaker.”

“Honey, Granny has your doll. She’s going to sleep over there and ….” (granny from phone) …”she’s such a big help to me because I’m getting older and could use a hand and she’ll be back s….” (cut off by screaming from my child upon newly realizing I wasn’t already back from picking up her doll from Granny and Grandpa’s house and what was I doing in her room empty-handed?

I thanked my mom, gave my eldest up to my husband and located our two-year-old trying somewhat successfully to brush her teeth in the bathroom.

“Am I being good, mommy?” she mumbled through a mouth of foam.

I think kids have an innate sense of when to drive that point home.

Drama ended for the evening. I picked the girls up from daycare today and first question out of my eldest’s mouth:

“Is my dolly home yet?”

“I don’t know, we’ll have to go home and see.”

Came home to this:

You will note Blue Barbie brought chocolate with her. Always good to bring gifts for folks when you come home from a trip, right?

As for me, the whole thing was a pretty telling way to round out Mother’s Day at this stage of motherhood.

Hope all the mothers out there had a wonderful and dolly drama free weekend!