Although I find little girls to be fickle in their love, Sox. Franny dumped her AGD for the Monster High crowd, then shifted over to Barbie, then down the rabbit hole of Zoobles, etc. Wash, rinse, repeat. I think the AGDs may be due for a resurgence in a month or two.

We traipsed all over New York, on foot, and couldn't go far without running into another doll-toting, glazed-eyed seven-ish-year-old. They spotted each other across galleries at the Met. They conclaved beneath statuary in Central Park. They saved each other seats on the train. Granted, once within the hallowed pink halls of The Store, they were ready to stab one another in order to get their mitts on the goods, but otherwise? CULT.

I showed Matilda the picture of HKF on FB and the first thing she said was, "That looks like an American Girl Doll."

Although I find little girls to be fickle in their love, Sox.

I'm down with that. We had a conversation at the Met about why the doll didn't have armor or an elven cloak for the quest she was likely going on in the near future. If the doll ends up with a wacky haircut and a borg mod eventually, I'll know she's my kid.

Though, at the Met, we made it to three places. The Egyptian tombs, the armor (we were looking for Sting and some decent Smaug-resistant chain mail), and the showstopper: the part of the American wing where they've dropped the facade of a 3-story house and backed it with rooms filled with early-American furnishings. We went through that four times, because it's like a life-size dollhouse.

the first thing she said was, "That looks like an American Girl Doll."

Please let the second thing be: "let's see what we can make out of it?"

Please let the second thing be: "let's see what we can make out of it?"

She was talking about HKF's doll which was in the picture. Matilda has not gotten to the part of her development where she'd want to make mods on her dolls, and I suspect she'd be somewhat aghast at the notion.

It sounds like you guys had a great time, Sox!

I went to a conference on fundraising and signed and emailed our various tax signature pages to our accountant. I also ate half priced pizza and drank half priced wine and am currently taking Hunger Games quizzes on EW.com!

It sounds like you guys had a great time, Sox!

It's true. It was crazy, but it was fun. I'll quit short-circuiting about the dolls now.

I got an American Girl doll when I was eight, pretty soon after they first started selling them, and I loved her. There was nowhere near as much American Girl stuff as there is now, but I had most of what was available. There was a cookbook, which had a menu and recipes for a meal that each character would have had, along with a lot of historical information about why they ate the foods they ate and what sorts of tools they'd have in their kitchens, and I made a bunch of those, with my mom's help. (Most of the recipes were really not designed for a kid to cook alone.) There were also reproductions of board games from the different eras, which were kind of fun, though the early ones were really preachy. I'm trying to remember what else. They sold patterns for a bunch of the doll dresses, and I tried making one, but they were a little too complicated. You could get a doll-size set of school books, which were miniature reproductions of actual school books used during that time, and I squinted a lot to read those.

That sounds amazing, Hil. And much more educationally oriented.

Wow. I'm tired. Feet hurt.