Thursday, July 26, 2012

Nesting Dolls

For a while, the only thing I thought of when hearing the word "mamushka" was the Addams Family.  Do you remember that scene from the first movie, where Gomez and Uncle Fester do this outrageous dance number?  For years, we would shout this out for no apparent reason.  Part of it may have been our work at the amusement park, where an Addams Family pinball game rested.  It was an epic pinball game - probably my favorite ever - and one of the bonus games included was called "The Mamushka!"  We'd hear Raul Julia's voice cry out over and over again:  "The Mamushka!"


They danced a dance of brotherly love called the mamushka, and all was well in the world.  We still enjoy the movie to this day.  But a few years later, we ran into  shop called Babushka in the Mall of America in Minnesota.  This was a store in the mall that sold entirely matryoska dolls - or nesting dolls.  They look like this:


Can you believe it?  This is obviously at a time where our economy was booming.  How on earth can a store survive in a mall selling only nesting dolls?  It was quite surreal to say the least - you could probably only find a place inside the Mall of America.  We had to go in.  And of course, we had to yell out, "The Babushka!"  Yes, we had a really fun time yelling out "Babushka!"  At least until the people who owned the store asked us to leave...

Anyway, fast forward to today.  Or, at least when we met Madison.  That is, after all, what this blog is about!  Madison actually has three sets of nesting dolls in the house.  One is the real deal, something like you see above.  Another is a set is one that we got in China while we were there.  We picked it up in the Beijing Zoo, and it looks pretty much like this:



Yes, the pandas were the reason for being at the zoo, and Mommy always liked nesting dolls.  We have these on display in her room with all the other pandas.  Madison actually has quite a few pandas in her room - from Pez to stuffed animals to books and movies.  But the nesting dolls were a big part of Madison's early television watching too:


She still watches the Higglytown Heroes from time to time, and yes, she has a set of nesting dolls that looks pretty much like you see above.  It's a fun set, and a fun show.  The squirrel is by far the favorite character in the bunch.

Today, Nana and Ba-Ba returned home a bit earlier than scheduled - back to Florida.  But we'll see them in just a few short days as we head down there ourselves.  So no worries there.  The trip was just as easy and uneventful, so we're certainly grateful for that.

Meanwhile, Madison continued her classes and Daddy continued his work.  Earlier though, we made a trip to our virtual Disneyland.  Madison earned it, having played her piano enough to get a Mom-buck. She spent it wisely on a trip to Disneyland for the Kinect.  The two of us were jumping and dancing, actually still discovering a few new things.  The game has a whole lot more to discover, but we're slow moving with this one.  It's been fun though!

You may be curious about how we ended the evening, or more curious about how the subject of nesting dolls came up.  Well, Mommy and Daddy watched "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" again, and we saw that great tesla coil music scene again - and also the "grimhold."


Yep, it's a big ol' nesting doll.  He's a little dark though.  In fact, they're all bad guys, so we'll probably not be adding this one to our collection.  Besides, who would want to risk opening one?

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