Let me tell you about a girl and her purse.

This is a picture of Maddy's purse. It was a gift from her other Grandma, and she has loved it from the day she got it. She carries it with her everywhere, of course, because she knows from observation that a woman always carries a purse with her Important Things in it!


When she goes up to bed, she puts her purse carefully on the table next to her bed, next to her Cars lamp. If she gets upstairs with all of her other Necessary Stuff (her stuffed dog Meena, her blanky, her binky and her Big Blue Blanket), and then notices that her purse was left behind, she yells for the purse until it is found and brought to her, then it is placed on the table. Where it belongs.


She gets mad if she finds anyone pawing through her purse, and yells, "No! Gettout! Mine!", as any woman would, so I have a picture of the purse, but not of the contents. She has been a little more lenient with me because I am her Nan, so I have been able to look through the contents a little bit, and also I have paid attention when she is looking in it for something, or adding something new, so I have a pretty good idea of what's in it.

• There is a spare binky, just in case she loses the one in her mouth.
• A comb, although heaven forbid anyone should take it out and use it on her hair, which generally looks like monkeys have been doing science experiments on her head.
• A cellphone, or sometimes two, because she knows that a cellphone is an Important Thing to carry with her, and we give her our old ones, so she has plenty to choose from. Her favorite cellphone is the pink one that used to be Kim's. Maddy calls it Phineas and Ferb, because on that show, their older sister Candace has a pink phone just like it.
• She has a chapstick, because you know, Makeup.
• The rest of the contents vary from day to day, depending on what she has been playing with. Today I saw a baby-sized My Little Pony, a Hot Wheels car, and a Scrabble tile that she stole from my house. A couple of days ago I saw her pull out a mirror mounted on cardboard and she smiled at herself in it, murmuring fondly, "I see you...".
• Oh, I almost forgot, she usually has at least one bead necklace and a green rubber bracelet, too. Women like jewelry!

Her purse is often topped off with a small, open bag of chips ("Reetos!"), or a couple of loose cookies, or even a banana that she is transporting from one place to another. She knows it's a good idea to have a snack with her in case of emergency. (I taught her that.)


Last week Rachel and I took Ash and Maddy with us to Rockford so that Maddy could play at Monkey Joe's, a kid's play place full of bouncy castles and bouncy slides (and you know Maddy likes to bounce!), and I needed to go to the Ulta store to see the eyebrow specialist. (Shut. Up.)


Maddy brought her purse and her blanky, and sat in her car seat with both of them balanced on her lap, but just as we got into Rockford, her purse slipped off her lap and landed upside down on the floor of the car! Oh, the screaming!


It had fallen on the far side of the car, and Ash was sitting next to her on the other side, where he couldn't reach it to pick up her Stuff, so he told her she would have to wait until we got to Monkey Joe's for him to get her purse.


Maddy was furiously upset and none of us could reason with her, so finally Ash took off his seat belt, told Rachel not to have an accident and kill him, and he slid back to the rear seat and cleaned up all of her Stuff. He got every bit of it, too, because she was watching him carefully, and when he first gave it back, she could see that there was still Stuff on the floor, and she yelled for it!


Ash gave that purse the evil eye when he finally had all of the Stuff back in it, but he just doesn't understand that a girl needs her purse!