Hurray! Here I am. I'm at work - but done for the day and just waiting for Mandy to finish so we can go play. I figured I would finally write that blog post that's been brewing in my head for days now.

SCENE: Sunday night at Alice's house. We are already in bed, playing on our computers.

ALICE: Oh my god.

KAREL: What?

ALICE: 'My Fake Baby?'

Karel looks over at Alice's computer to see this post

KAREL: What?!?!

We then proceeded to watch My Fake Baby in five parts (I fell asleep so we split it across two nights) - it is a documentary that aired in the UK about a burgeoning trend of people, mostly women I would assume, who buy incredibly lifelike baby dolls and hold them, dress them, 'feed them' and love them like real babies. Oh and push them around in prams and keep them in nurseries. And change their diapers. (The British call them 'nappies.' I think that sounds way more adorable than 'diapers.' And more phonetic too.)

The doc featured three women:

Jaime. She makes these baby dolls. They are called 'reborns' as they are manufactured baby dolls who are then modified and reconstructed to appear exponentially more lifelike. She even goes so far as to create milk spots (um - what are milk spots exactly? Anyone?), blemishes, capillaries, and micro-rooted eyelashes. After having four children, she is unable to have any more, so this is the closet thing she has to an endless clan of offspring. And her real live children? They wear the dismembered baby parts on their hands and beat each other with them. Sweet!

Here is her website, Babybuntins Nursery. Feel free to browse and gawk and shudder at how creepily realistic these baby dolls look.

Sue. She has a nursery in her house in which her dolls (sorry, they're 'babies') live. They have their own cribs, designer wardrobes, prams, and, apparently, personalities. She has baby bottles filled with fabric softener, which resembles milk but 'never smells bad.' The doc followed her journey to DC to pick up her latest 'birth,' Sophie. We watch as she waits in the hotel room, restless with anticipation, noting that 'this is a very long labor.' (I'm sorry - was someone shoving a watermelon through your cervix at that very moment to simulate actual labor?) At long last Sophie arrives, and Sue very carefully unwraps her (there is a diaper strapped over her head... theme packaging! How clever) and sets her on the bed so that she can get to know her and grow to love her. But - GASP! - there is a crack in little Sophie's neck. Sue is very upset because Sophie is 'injured.'

-at this point I have to interject and mention that when I related this story to Mandy, she asked me if Sue then took Sophie to the hospital. Oh, how I wish she had.-

Sue's husband comments that he doesn't mind Sue's obsession with reborns because 'everyone has hobbies.'

Christine. In the first few parts of the doc, Christine relates a story of baby Harry, and still photos of said Harry flash across the screen. She talks about him in past tense as if he is dead. She misses him so much that she is going to meet with Jaime for a consult to have a replica of Harry made. In part 3 we find out that Harry was her grandson and he is in fact very much alive. Just living in New Zealand, which is apparently far enough to represent heaven. (Or, hell. Or the mystical place where children disappear to when they leave you.) She raised Harry from birth because his mother - her daughter - had cancer, but now the cancer is gone and his mother fell in love with a hunky New Zealander who whisked her and little Harry away to his faraway land. Jaime makes Christine a reborn in the very likeness of Harry based on some photographs, and when Christine goes to pick him up, she tearfully exclaims, 'Now no one can take him away from me!!'

When she gets home cradling the reborn Harry in her arms, her husband says to her: 'It's like looking at something on a mortuary slab.' My hero!

The killer, though, is when Christine shows reborn Harry to real live Harry over webcam, and he says in his little toddler voice: 'It's just a doll!'

Children really are the wisest.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to stare incredulously at Babybuntins Nursery for the next several hours. Better start saving up! These puppies start at around $500 USD apiece.