✅ The Nice List

Festival of Colours

Merri didn't find the other dolls right away, but she did find a lot of other toys. There was a little house with yellow walls and a red roof, and there were holes in the roof that were all different shapes. She thought it looked funny, until Tarja showed her that she could put some of the blocks that came with it in through the holes. She kept on trying, until she managed to get most of them inside. But she decided pretty quickly that this toy was a bit boring. She was still too big for baby toys, and that meant it was too easy. She couldn't enjoy it yet. She pouted, and pushed it across the floor. And then, with a slightly less enthusiastic expression she turned back to the huge pile of gifts.

"Is something wrong, Merri?" Tarja asked, and Merri nodded. Tarja just waited, so a couple of seconds later she answered properly.

"It's boring. Too big."

"Oh, do you want to be a bit younger?" Tarja asked. "Then you could have fun, and it might be more of a challenge for you."

Merri nodded, but with some hesitation. She knew she was a big girl, and it was weird to think about being a baby again. But she knew she was getting littler if she really thought about it, and she knew that she'd been having fun as well. So maybe she really would enjoy being even littler for a bit.

"You see, I've got something that might help you to feel more like a baby," Tarja said, holding up a slim black thing that might have been a tiny phone, or maybe a remote control. Was there something special that would make her feel smaller on TV? But Tarja was still talking: "I think if you're going to be a real baby, though, you'll need to take some precautions, just in case." Merri looked back at her, not understanding, but then glanced down at her hand. Tarja was tapping the pack of diapers on the coffee table; with a girl who looked very much like a blogger version of Merri smiling on the front of the pack. And Merri knew right away what her answer had to be. She noticed that the pack was already open, as well

"No!" she muttered. "No, I'm not a baby. Don't need that." She turned away from Tarja deliberately to make her point, and then pouted at a different part of the stack of gifts. She brushed aside some of the scattered remnants of wrapping paper, and after a couple of attempts managed to grab another present from beneath.

It was wider than most of the others, but thin enough that she could get her hands around it from top to bottom. It was lighter than she had expected, but there was some weight to it. It felt like the weight was concentrated to either side of the box, and it felt hard when she squeezed it. Maybe a makeup set? She could hear plastic rattling on plastic as she tilted it, though, so she didn't really have many guesses at what it could be.

She stared at the pattern of unicorns on the paper, trying to work out what might be inside. But after a few seconds she decided that she might as well just look. She stuck her fingers under one of the flaps and started to pull the wrapping paper up. Once she had torn off a little of the wrapping paper, she could see a clear plastic case inside, but it looked a lot more solid than the one that had held her Barbie. And inside, she saw so many vibrant colours. And she was sure that there was a bunny in there too. Intrigued, she grasped at another piece of the paper and tore through it like a monster until she was rewarded with a bright picture and a bunch of rainbows visible inside the box.

Her new gift declared itself to be a deluxe paint set. The box was shaped like a briefcase, with a red base and clear plastic lid. Inside there were a couple of sections containing pots and tubes of paint, and in the middle was a pot for water, a plastic palette, and a little rack with a dozen different brushes inside. The sticker on the lid had pictures of all the things she could draw, as well as pictures of the paint tubes and brushes. Merri laughed when she saw that, because she could just look through the lid to see what was inside, so it didn't really need the sticker. But it gave her an idea. She was going to do a picture of a dinosaur, just like the one on the lid.