Today was a big, big day at the Mast household. Baby Sally’s bed went to a garage sale for Inclusion Connections. A new little girl will be getting this super deluxe baby bed, bath, swing high chair combo that still plays music.

Now if you are friends with us or have been following TheSassySouthernGal for very long, you know all about Baby Sally and Marisol. If not, here’s a quick review. Rachel received Baby Sally as a Christmas gift her 2nd Christmas. She was 18 months old. Baby Sally quickly became her constant companion. She has been to doctor’s appointments, church, airplanes, Disney, New York City, been x-rayed at Children’s Mercy Hospital

and her crevices cleaned by the dental assistant at Dr. Mehdi’s office. After all these years of love, she has an eye that barely works. She is stained. She is lumpy and has loose joints. If there is a baby or a baby doll loved more than this one, I sure do want to meet her! The super deluxe bed, bath, swing combo was delivered by Santa for Rachel’s 3rd Christmas.

Marisol, American Girl’s Girl of the Year, came along when Rachel was 6. She sat on a shelf for two years playing the role of Cinderella because Rachel would tell you that she cooked and cleaned while we were away. Side note: I never saw any evidence of this. However in the past few years, Sally stays home most of the time and Marisol goes out more. She has had several ear surgeries and has a sleepover almost every night. I think that subconsciously, Rachel knows that Sally is medically fragile. In other words, she may disintegrate!

Back in the summer some friends were coming over. Rachel told me she needed to put the bed in the closet. I wanted to know why and she said she didn’t want her friends to see the bed. We have discussed that she probably shouldn’t talk about the dolls at school. Some people might make fun. I assured her that these friends wouldn’t mind if the bed was in her room. This did allow for us to talk about age appropriate toys and we were able to move the bed to the basement. It has been there several months.

Sally and Marisol are truly Rachel’s confidants.  And she is a great mom to them. We learn a lot through Sally and Marisol. Inclusion Connections is having a garage sale fundraiser so I saw my chance.  I mentioned to Rachel it might be nice to donate the bed because some little girl doesn’t have a bed for her babies and you could help raise money for Inclusion Connections, too.  This was not met with great enthusiasm but she didn’t say no. She said she would need to talk to Marisol and Sally. OK.

Several days passed and I thought that we would probably have the bed forever. Last night though, Rachel brought Sally and Marisol to us. She was a bit teary and she said, “I talked to Sally about her bed. And Baby Sally cried. She doesn’t want to give away her bed.” Then she said, “But Marisol is older and she told Baby Sally that some little girl needs a bed and it would be nice to give the bed away. She told her that she would take care of her. So you can take the bed.”

I took the bed to the home of the garage sale this morning. Guess what?  Baby Sally isn’t the only one who cried.