LITTLE GIRLS & THEIR DOLLIES

 

The little girl in the prompt photo is holding a doll so “Little Girls & Their Dollies” is my theme for this post.

Me with my Raggedy Andy doll sitting on a log in Muir Woods in 1942.

I was 7 when I had this pretty doll I named Peggy though I don't remember why I gave her that name?

The following year I had this full-size, life-like baby doll which could wear real baby clothes.  I named her “Joy” and she brought me joy in the fall of that year in particular when I came down with a serious case of bronchitis.  I was out of school for the better part of a month and had to sit and play quietly or I’d have horrible coughing spells.  So Mom set up a card table for me to play on and a favorite thing to do was lay out all kinds of baby clothes and dress and undress my “Joy” doll. J

Later in life, I fell in love with these cloth dolls I found in various thrift shops and kept for a while.  My kitty cat, Molly, liked to cuddle with the ladies.  You will see the doll in the dark blue dress again in a few pictures.

Enough about me and my dolls when I was a little girl and on to my daughters and their dolls when they were little girls.

This is my eldest daughter in 1974 when she was 2 ½ .  She forgot to put some clothes on her dolly, but she’s holding it tenderly . . .

. . . which was not always the case.

Here she is again in the fall of ‘74, this time hanging on to her Raggedy Ann doll as she peeks in the playpen at her younger sister.  Until I started looking through my photo albums for photos to share in this post, I’d forgotten she’d had a Raggedy Ann doll.

That Christmas Santa brought her a full-size baby doll much like her mother had when she was young, and she appears to be holding it correctly as a mother should hold her baby.

There were moments, however, when she was not quite so correct with her baby care technique.

Here, she’s reading to her baby doll and another doll who has lost an eye.  Mom needed to sew one back.

In the fall of 1975 a couple of mothers and I got together and sponsored a doll show for young girls in the area and it was a lot of fun.  A couple of young fellows can be seen amongst the girls.  They had to be there because their mothers were running the show, but they were good sports about it.

That December (‘75), was eldest daughter’s 3^rd birthday and she was gifted with a tall walking doll, and a couple of Holly Hobbie dolls.  She’s holding “Holly Hobbie” & “Heather”.

(I can hardly believe we used to watch TV on such a small screen!)

Do you remember the “Holly Hobbie” dolls?

That Christmas our son got into the scene with a “Six Million Dollar Man” doll except it wasn’t a doll, of course.  Heaven forbid.  It was an “Action Figure”. J

That Christmas is also the first time I have a picture of youngest daughter with Fisher Price’s “Mary” doll.

My husband’s mother meant for the doll to be given to our eldest daughter when her younger sister was born so she would have her own ‘baby’ to take care of, but she already had so many dolls I decided to keep “Mary” for the youngest daughter when she was old enough to have a doll.  I’m not sure when that might have been?  She was 1 ½ when this picture was taken, but the doll already looks rather rumpled - lacking her dress and pinafore and her hair is a bit unkempt – so I must have given the doll to her before that - possibly for her first birthday that June?  Whenever, she loved “Mary” and carried her around with her all the time.  

Here she is the following summer with her beloved “Mary”.  

And again 3 years later in 1979 but I’m not sure if this is “Mary” or ‘Mary Sunshine’?  As mentioned, daughter carried “Mary” with her everywhere.  One day she was sitting with her sister in a store where I was shopping.  When I said it was time to go, the girls jumped up and followed me out of the store.  It wasn’t until we got home youngest daughter realized she’d left “Mary” behind.  We went back to the store immediately, but the doll was gone.  No one had turned it in.  We were only away 10 or 15 minutes, but that was all the time it took for someone to walk off with poor “Mary”.  Our daughter was heartbroken.

So at the first opportunity, I found another “Mary” doll.  But it was brand new and of course the original “Mary” was pretty bedraggled by the time she was lost so I couldn’t very well tell my daughter it was the same doll.  I did think about telling her I’d found “Mary” and had her fixed up like new, but even at her young age, I knew she’d be a little suspicious of that explanation.  So instead I told her it was “Mary’s” cousin, ‘Mary Sunshine’, who’d come to keep her company until we could find “Mary”.  She accepted that, but didn’t cotton to ‘Mary Sunshine’ right away.  It took a while, but gradually, as she picked her up and held her more and more, ‘Mary Sunshine’ became a beloved replacement and we breathed a sigh of relief.

In 1983 she became interested in the “Strawberry Shortcake” mini dolls and had a small collection of them.  That December I went to a Christmas craft fair and discovered a custom made full-sized “Strawberry Shortcake” doll and knew Santa would be bringing it to her for Christmas and here she is holding it on her lap.  Note her sister behind her is holding the doll with the dark blue dress you saw earlier when I was talking about cloth dolls I found in thrift shops.  I found this particular doll, however, at the same craft fair and not a thrift shop. J

The full-sized custom made “Strawberry Shortcake” doll was such a hit, I decided to ask the woman who had made her if she could make a “Huckleberry Pie” doll for daughter’s birthday that following June and she did.

The following Christmas, then, (1984) I had the woman make another doll in the series, the one called “Angel Cake”. The dolls were $25. each at the time.  Custom made like that, I wonder what they might be worth today?  I asked my daughter if she still has the dolls and she’s fairly certain she still has all her Strawberry Shortcake dolls and accessories in a box somewhere?  If so, I told her to check out eBay!  But maybe she's planning to save them for granddaughters? J

Angel Cake was the last of the custom series, however, as sadly, the woman making them passed away the following year.  She did beautiful work.  These dolls were really something!

Both girls, at this point, were beginning to outgrow dolls – especially eldest daughter, so the custom made “Strawberry Shortcake” trio were pretty much it.  There is a last doll, however - Estelle, who sits at the front door greeting folks and whom I dress up for special occasions such as Halloween and Christmas.

And who occasionally takes tea with me. J

:->

La Nightingail