In the midst of all the college applications and financial aid forms, I’m getting quite sentimental that Sophia, my oldest daughter and first born child, will be heading off to college in the fall. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “Where did the time go?” My mood of nostalgia was further ingrained a few weeks ago when I watched Toy Story 3, as Andy, Woody’s owner, packed up his toys to put in the attic while he too prepared to leave home. Any parent, Andy’s included, who has stood in my shoes knows exactly how I feel. It made me want to preserve Sophia’s childhood and I frantically wondered, “Whatever happened to Chou Chou Baby?”  Chou Chou was a doll that ate, drank, cooed, cried and wiggled its legs like a real baby. My girls each had one and they loved her. Her plus all the American Girl dolls and their accompanying paraphernalia

Sophia and Eva both loved to play with baby dolls and would do so for hours on end. I used to look at them and think how sad I would be when they tired of them.  Eventually they did, but we never gave them away. Instead I packed them in boxes and put them in storage. When we moved to our new home I asked Jared, my ex, to stow them at his house for a while until we finished our remodel and could make room for them at ours. Then I forgot about them. Until now. This past weekend I asked him for them back and good thing I did. He put them in his outdoor shed where they had gotten wet from the outdoor moisture and were damp and moldy. When I got home, I emptied the boxes on my laundry room floor. The dolls survived OK, but the clothes needed washing. As I sorted through the pile, Sophia’s childhood flashed before my eyes. All those Christmas mornings and the bright looks of delight on their faces as they gasped with glee that Santa had brought them everything they wanted. (Well, not everything, but enough to make them deliriously happy.) A lot of the doll clothes were my girls’s actual baby clothes which, of course, made me even more wistful. And then I found her. Chou Chou. She was mixed in with the doll furniture. Perfectly in tact, naked but no worse for the wear. I feel so much better. She is now stored for safe keeping so that someday, hopefully not too soon, when I am a grandmother, god forbid, my grand children will have the same wonderful memories their mother had.