Little girls can hardly wait to get their very own American Girl doll, which can be customized to have the same hair and eye color and skin tone as them. While having their mini-me doll finally arrive can be exciting for any child, this precious girl just could not hold back her emotions when she saw her doll for the first time.
"It's got a leg like me," 10-year-old Emma exclaimed in between tears upon seeing that, just like her, the doll also had a prosthetic leg.
Emma had no idea her doll would come with the prosthetic. Since the dolls cannot be customized this way, Emma's mother, Courtney Fletcher Bennett, contacted the company A Step Ahead Prosthetics to make the doll more closely resemble her daughter. The New York-based company welcomes families to send American Girl dolls owned by children who had or are facing amputation so that they can modify them to add a prosthetic limb to better match the child. The company does this at no cost to increase self-esteem of amputees.
Emma's precious reaction to unboxing her American Girl doll was captured and posted to Facebook by her mother, and the post now has about 11 million views. Get the tissues out, because this video is truly heartwarming.
Emma's younger sister handed her the doll box while in their Cypress, Texas home. Even though she was instructed to read the letter sent from A Step Ahead Prosthetics, Emma couldn't help but peek down to see that her doll had a pink prosthetic leg.
"You got to be kidding me," she said in the video as she ripped the doll out of the box to give her a hug. Then came tears of joy, and she revealed how much she loved her new doll.
Bennett went on to read the letter aloud for her daughter, which stated that the doll took a few weeks to train to walk and run in her new prosthetic.
"She is ready to go home and live her life without limitations with you,'' the company wrote in the letter.
Emma (and all of us watching) can't stop crying as she thanked the company for "making a doll like me."
Watch Emma's sweet reaction to opening her American Girl doll with a prosthetic leg below.
Source: Facebook
