Marabelle's Trip to the Salon

There are perils to being the mother of girls. One of them reared its ugly head of hair this past week: doll hair. Unless it’s solid and plastic, it must be dealt with on a regular basis. Now, if your daughter is old enough and likes playing beauty parlor, you might be able to delegate the job of dolly stylist. Alas, neither of those situations applies to my household right now. 

So Marabelle needed a trip to the dolly salon. Her full name is Marabelle Lavinia Chandelier, thanks to a favorite Fancy Nancy book. Marabelle started out as a Madame Alexander doll with eyes that opened and closed and two neat, fluffy pigtails. These days, her eyes still open and close, but her pigtails have matted into one big frizzy ball of yuck, complete with drool, fuzz, dog fur, and other food-induced sticky spots. Now, the wise and zen thing to do would be to acknowledge that the doll’s hair is bound to get a bit out of control, and “accidentally” leave the scissors out next to the doll, easily within the girls’ reach. This would have been the easier approach, in retrospect. 

But I am the type of mom who has to look at this doll constantly and referee feuds over who has fair possession over her at any given minute. In other words, the frizzy ball of yuck drives me bonkers. So I spent large portions of two evenings attempting to tame the ball of yuck. Marabelle now sports French-braided pigtails. Who knows how long they’ll last. But odds are better for the continued presence of “hair” vs.“yuck” when it’s tightly tied down. 


Wish her luck.

One frizzy pigtail of yuck.

The view from the front.

The view from the back.