I’ve long loved American Girl dolls. While I’ve decided to finally decree “enough” on the full-size dolls, I continue to want to add to my collection of the mini dolls. This year in honor of the 25th anniversary, the company has special edition mini dolls in their holiday dresses. I went back and forth about whether or not I should buy them and finally decided to order a couple as my “reward” for juggling so much this session and making it through to the end! I opened up mini Josefina when my Monday night class ended and when my online class ends tonight, mini Kit will join her 🙂

To relate this post to my overall themes of this blog, I thought I’d mention an experience in the past when reading an American Girl book. In their “history mystery,” Riddle of the Prairie Bride, widowed father of 12 year old Ida Kate sends for a mail order bride. She arrives with her one year old baby and it soon becomes clear that something is amiss. She does not meet her description from her letters, gives inconsistent answers and so forth. Ida Kate investigates, mystery is solved, and true love reigns on the prairie. What’s the connection you may ask? Because, I always keep an eye out for “breastfeeding as normal” content in kids books and I loved that in this mystery the first clue that the prairie bride is not who she says she is is that she didn’t nurse her baby! (And, a one-year-old baby at that! Wow!) The book states, “She feeds him milk from a cup rather than nursing him as mothers do…” (Ida Kate notices the baby patting on the front of the mystery woman’s dress and instead of nursing him, she gets a cup of milk for him). I also liked the use of the word “nurse” instead of “breastfeed.” Cozy, familiar, desirable, and NORMAL. (With the emphasis on the process and not the product as Diane Wiessinger would say.) Of the top of my head, I also remember that in one of the AG short stories–Josefina’s Reward I think—her older sister has to hurry back from what she is doing to “nurse the baby” (who is also over one year old and walks and talks in the book).

(These breastfeeding bits don’t really make up for the bottles sold for Bitty Baby, but anyway.)

Mini Josefina in holiday finery

Holiday mini Kit is still in her box waiting to reward--luckily I have two regular mini Kits (plus one big Kit) to keep me company 😉