Isabelle has a genetic disease

Friends, it is sad but true. Isabelle has inherited a genetic disease. It's her Mother's fault. No one in my family carries this gene. She got it from her father, and Isabelle got it from her. All indications are that it is incurable, will cost a lot of money to treat, and will affect her the rest of her life.

She's a collector. It made be some time before the effect of the disease is clear. Carrie, you may know, exhibits this principally by an irrational desire to build new shelving systems to cover every available wall surface in display space for model horses. Although we do have our bedroom bureaus covered with Lord of the Rings merchendising. I hear tell the disease doesn't necessarily fix its symptoms in children this young. Right now it is model cars. Cars cars, as in cars from the Pixar movie Cars, which she has seen twice in the theater and loves.

It happened like this. Carrie found a "Lightning McQueen" car in a cereal box at work. She thought how Isabelle liked the movie, so she brought it home. Isabelle loved it, and said she needed another car. Unable to resist, we bought her Lightning's best friend, "Mater." Isabelle looked at the pictures on the box and said, "Want to get them all."

The diagnosis was confirmed when we noticed that, rather than play with the cars, at first she just wanted to line them up and look at them.

So now her idea of a good time is to go to the toy store and look to see if there are any new cars in. As of this writing, she has, in addition to Lightning and Mater, Sally, Doc Hudson, Ramone, Filmore, Red, Stanley, Luigi, and Wingo. Wingo, however, is in a different scale, which bothers her, and she wants to get one that is smaller. We, the indulgent parents that we are, have squirreled away Flo, a second Ramone in an alternate color, Guido, a tractor, and a second Luigi who came with Guido for birthday presents.

Oh well. At least she plays with them, now.