they are a girl’s best friend.

Ali has been completely taken with this necklace:
It is the FIRST thing that she asks for every morning, and the LAST thing that I pry off of her every night (and at naptimes, people. Don’t worry. I don’t let my toddler sleep with a cord of wires around her neck).

My Bible Study teacher had one on when we went to lunch last week (that luckily didn’t get ruined when Ali coated her with my coke). Ali adored it, and wore it during lunch. I remembered that Sue had given me one several years back, so later that day, I rooted around in my jewelry and found it.

You would have thought that I’d given Ali the best present in the world.

The only problem was, it was kind of like when in Indiana Jones, they unwrap a perfectly preserved body that is like 200 years old, then as soon as one of them touches it, it immediately disintegrates into nothingness.

That poor necklace was so old that a) the lights didn’t blink any more, and b) the lights immediately started falling off. About every five minutes, Ali was trying to “fix it”. Then she would beg me – “Mommy fix necklace!!”.

She wore it nonstop for several days, losing at least three lights per hour, until there were many more empty sockets than lights.

However, its increasing ugliness unfortunately did not dampen Ali’s love for her piece of fine jewelry. But it finally scared me enough (with all the loose wires hanging off and all) that I hid it, and told her that she must have left it upstairs/downstairs (yup, using that parental deception again).

But alas, what are Godmothers for but to make their Godchildren unbelievably and exceedingly happy, with a brand new, actually working, blinking-like-crazy necklace?
That’s right – blinking plastic lights are the new diamond.