Loving Dolls

I have been loving dolls since I was a little girl. I love baby dolls and girl dolls. I mostly love to love dolls. I once spied a gaggle of dolls at our local thrift shop and I had to buy all of them. Ostensibly, I wanted them to come home and dress them, but really I just wanted them to come home with me. One of my grandsons loves to play with the babies. He loves to put them in the highchair and feed them and wrap them up and put them to bed. I am assuming he does this in his mothers day out class, cause he doesn't have any babies at his house. He reprimanded me one day when I called them "baby dolls." "Meme," he said, "they are babies." Which I understood to mean, not to call them dolls, which would mean they are not real.

I am the one who usually does the surprise gift for my mom on Christmas. One year I found a reproduction Patsy doll to give to my mom. My mom tells the story of how she had just given birth to me and the twilight medicine made her loopy. She held me for the first time and she cried talking to my dad saying how she now had a Patsy doll. The doll she had always wanted as a little girl, but couldn't afford. So I was her little doll. So at age 76 she finally had a real Patsy doll.

But, this year was different. This year my mom made a surprise. She gave me my favorite doll. Poor Pitiful Pearl. I was absolutely astounded. I couldn't believe it. She had a new dress, but she was as sweet as she ever had been. When I first saw her as a little girl in one of the catalogs, Sears, JC Penney or Montgomery Ward I just fell in love with her. All the other dolls were very pretty, and I certainly had my share of those dolls, but this is the doll I truly loved. I wanted to take care of her and love her. I often would say later on as an adult, in my mothers presence, that I didn't know what ever became of her. She never said, and if she actually "got rid of her" I don't want to know. Now Pearl is back home and looking over me from my dresser. Now I can love her.

But I have other dolls. Oh I don't mean all those expensive dolls. I think they are so beautiful like works of art, but I want real dolls you play with, and mostly dress. I have my youngest daughter's Felicity doll, which I dress. There are many patterns for the American Girl dolls. I made up a clown outfit out of vintage material for Halloween, even though we don't celebrate Halloween, she was all decked out for a party!

I am now dressing my Barbie. She has been with me for 23 years and I have been collecting things for her like telephones and chairs. So today, I had to make her a ski outfit. It is winter or at least it should be winter. She needs to go Cross Country skiing and be warm, so I have her in new overalls and a new hat. All the other things in the picture are from her collection. It is so weird to finally have a place to show off Barbie and her clothes. It is just too much fun.

I gave my husband a doll for a Christmas present. A Lou Holtz Doll. (Sorry he can't come out of the bag yet!) I'm not so sure he is into the whole doll thing yet, but it is start and it is about the Razorbacks! We can only hope.

Happy Twenty-oh-eight