The Power of Superglue

It happens.  Toys get broken, and our little ones are still young enough to  think their mommy and daddy can fix everything, so ultimately they come to me with tears in their eyes and pieces in hand, pitiful expressions upon their faces, hoping I can remedy the situation.  I can’t tell you how many books I have glued and taped together for our son, who can’t sleep with out a car book in his hand.  (Yes, he sleeps with a book.)

Books are easy for me to fix; I used to teach language arts and I fixed my own classroom collection of paperbacks all the time.  But what I dread fixing our these little Disney Princess dolls my daughter has.  Maybe you’ve seen them, they look like this:

There are two versions of these dreaded dolls; some come with straight arms and itty-bitty shoes (which I super-glued on right away) and others have bent arms. What I hate is that the straight armed doll’s heads will come off if you try to turn their heads, but the bent armed ones are made so you can turn their heads. That’s hard for a 3 1/2 year old to grasp. We’ve had a lot of beheaded dolls. Usually it takes both my husband and I to perform surgery on the doll, prying open her neck enough to slide the little stick that holds her head on into the opening and then gluing her body shut again.

Somehow my daughter beheaded Ariel when she pulled her dress off the other day. (Did I mention these things have removable clothes?) I tried to convince her that I needed Daddy’s help to fix her doll, but she “couldn’t play with out Ariel!” So I set about trying to do it myself. I was successful, with one problem, I superglued the fork to the doll when I used it to squeeze her neck shut. Sigh. Why did I use my good silverware? Let’s just say that didn’t go over too well. I’ve decided having a set of spares I can pull out for future beheadings and other traumas might be a good idea…

And then there was yesterday, when Peanut’s brother had Prince Charming and just as I said, “Don’t fight over the prince, just ask your brother to give it to you…” he was torn apart.
This was our first injury to a prince. Thankfully he was much easier to fix; a little super glue and he was good as new.

Moral to the story? Superglue is Mommy’s best friend (just don’t use your good silverware to help hold whatever toy you’re gluing!)