Mama Merit Badge: Dora Salvage

Strider decided that Mermaid Dora looked tasty. He chewed off both her feet leaving shredded plastic doll leg stumps. It looked pretty gross. I wanted to toss her in the garbage and hope for "out of sight, out of mind". But, it was also a pretty vivid message about picking up. Plus, I realized that since she was supposed to be "Mermaid" Dora, feet weren't technically necessary.

So, after discussing that we need to be responsible for our things, I got out my sewing machine and some fabric. I didn't have any batting. Then I laughed and decided to employ the Lou and Adoph construction method.

Best friends, Lou and Adolph bought one piece of property and split it into two, building identical little postage stamp houses side-by-side. Oosje & Bampa now live in one of the houses. Every long weekend, Lou & Adoph added a room onto one of the houses, so that both ended up as meandering structures built with lots of love and little skill. When they were building a floor, or an attic, or a wall, and they didn't have quite enough of whatever they needed to make things level, they would just stuff magazines or telephone books or scrap wood into the offending hole and move on.

This afternoon, looking at my stack of supplies, I realized that I could use the scrap bits for stuffing. It took me awhile to work out how the tail would attach to a plastic doll, until I saw Daddy's old socks that I had cut the feet out of to protect Ace's knees when he crawled (they are the "legwarmers" in the walking video). They never worked for Ace and have been sitting around the house for weeks. Now, they are both stuffing and ribbing for a very functional mermaid tail. All is well again.