the Great Barbie Masacre

Sunday dinner is always a little crazy at our house, but this week was a little crazier.  I believe we had 26 children here altogether.  Mostly they are pretty good, play outside, get a little noisy.. the usual.  But this Sunday the ornery bug bit the normally sweet boy cousins.  As they were playing in Bo and Katy's room, one boy accidentally pulled the legs on the Barbie too hard and they  both came off.  Being boys, they thought that was pretty funny.  So a few of them picked up a Barbie and did the same.  In the end, 6 Barbies became paraplegics   I'm sure this event took less than 2 minutes and there was probably some serious regret when they thought 2 seconds about what they had just done.

Katy, of course, was devastated.  She cried.  Hard.  She really does like to play with her Barbies.  We don't know exactly who or what took place in that two minutes other than her Barbies look like that and the boys were not giggling anymore.  One of the cousins gave her a hug and apologized before he left promising a new Barbie.  Another called her later once his mom realized what had all happened and also tearfully apologized and told her he loved her.  Both Bo and Rhett (who didn't actually break anything) offered to put money in to buy her new dolls.  She was definitely feeling the love.

As stinky as this situation was, there were a lot of lessons learned and sweet experiences to be had.  I'm so proud of Katy for being immediately forgiving.  She definitely cried, but was quick to tell her cousins it was OK and that she loved them.  The cousins got to see first hand the hurt she felt when they had broken her dolls and feel that sorrow and then show their love for her in the end. I'm sure the promise of getting new dolls helps with her mourning.  I will be surprised if this experience is forgotten very quickly. The next day I bought her a Barbie while I was at the store.  When I gave it to her, she barely looked at it, but jumped up on the chair, threw her arms around my neck and said "I love you Mama!"   We are part of an awesome family where brother and sister love each other, parents love their children and cousins love their cousins.  I'm so grateful that we can have experiences like this where gossiping doesn't ensue and fingers aren't pointed.  Love and forgiveness prevail.  If only we could all be like the little children....