Madison's June

This is June.  She is from Disney's Little Einsteins.  I cannot remember exactly when June joined our family.  If you told me that she was born on the same day as Madison, and showed me hospital pictures to prove it, I would nod my head as though that was a plausible possibility.  She's been with us for somewhere near that long!

I don't know what Madison's fascination or love with her has been.  But, she is a ballerina and has a sing-song-y voice.  What more could you ask for when you are ultra-little?

So, yesterday was a complete baffle to me.  I came down the hallway and passed by Madison's bedroom.  I saw what seems to be becoming more and more typical, especially during these summer days home from school.  Madison had a pair of dirty clothes, underwear and pajamas strewn across the floor.  Her bed was not only not made, but the quilt was all bunched up in a pile, with numerous little plastic fairies arranged in some sort of imaginative fashion.  I found three different pairs of shoes shoved under one dresser.  She had crafts and supplies lop-sidedly piled on that same dresser, a desk, the floor below the desk, and her other bed.  Then, I noticed several of her Eiffel Towers with ribbons tied to each corner of each base, strung upside down, attached, in knot format, to the knobs of dresser drawers.  I didn't pause long enough to ask about those.  I didn't pause long enough to ask any questions.  I ordered fairies back in their drawer, clothes into the basket, and...the trash can to be brought in.

We started in on the room like clock-work.  Madison was given about 1/2 a second to say "yes" or "no" to each and every item in her room that I held up.  Later, as I was organizing the books and restacking them, she was ordered to go through this basket she has on top of one dresser.  It holds a ton of smaller stuffed animals and soft dolls.  When she seemingly casually placed June on top of the items that were going out, I was so shocked I couldn't even think of any words to formulate an interrogating question.

Not the June that went in the car for every errand, has visited and moved to more states that most other dolls, has gone to school, and I'm not even talking about every single Show and Tell...   Not the June that has actually gone through the wash-machine, and maybe the dryer, too?  Definitely not the June who has even been mailed in a box by the United States Postal Service.  (She was being played with one morning at grandma and grandpa's house instead of being placed in the car to leave.  Upon time to leave, she was left in the house...and promptly put in a box and expedited across a few states, to the anxiety of one little miss Madison.)  Not the same June, in character format, that we met at MGM to Madison's shrieks heard across the park and souvenir pictures placed prominently around the house for years on end.

Surely we are not growing up and out of June, right?  This is just a moment of temporary insanity, right?

Surely sanity will return.  But, I think I'll be holding on to her, just for now, waiting for Madison's long-string of playfulness to return.  Or, maybe long enough for the next generation to become just as infatuated with.