It's school vacation week in Bostonland and it's obvious how stressful vacation week is for everyone who is not on vacation from school. It shouldn't be stressful, I mean, the school buses aren't tying up traffic and there's free admission for kiddies at the MFA, but it's just the expectation is so high to keep the kiddies enterTAAAAAINED and the weather is not yet run-outside-with-no-jacket-warm outside, so we get done with Baby Boot Camp and then where do we go? We didn't plan anything and we didn't secure the free tickets to the Children's Museum from the library three months ago, so we go...to the mall. Uffff. The mall, really? With the tongues of Build-a-Bear unfurling and suddenly we have a new firefighter fluffbear with the full-on firehose accessory? Or so I've heard.

You know, today I thought we'd have a girly fun time at the American Girl Doll store. Oh that cute cafe where you can snap up a doll with her own sassy seat that snaps to your table while you eat high epicure like peanut butter and jelly and hot fudge sundaes! How $$$pecial does that sound? Well, evidently $$$o $pecial that every other 'burban gurl and her mom had the same idea. Imagine! Over school vacation week! The truth is that the store was wall-to-wall mayhem and there was a THREE HOUR WAIT!?! for an appointment at the dolly salon. There was a whole serpentine line of chickadees with their American Girl beloveds in tow for their treatments. Hair styles and ear piercings and probably even upper lip waxes. I mean, it's good to be an American Girl Doll, right?

I just couldn't believe that this was The To Do, though. I mean, whatever happened to using your BookIt! coupons for a free personal pan pizza over school vacation? Or watching a Tom Hanks VHS that your grandma rented from the library? Or reorganizing your sticker book or purging all your orphaned socks from the sock drawer? Is this really...

I'm sorry, I can't think about this right now.

My son just turned 11 months today and who cares about American Girl Dolls when I have this perfect American Baby Doll right...

here!

It's wrong to laugh when this happens. I know.