The Un-Unsentimental Niece

  Regular readers of the blog may have read mention of my niece,which I refer to by the code name Unsentimental Niece. I call her that because, amongst other reasons, she sold off bits of her childhood for a few dollars at yard sales. However, I recently found out that she's not totally unsentimental.
  When my niece was about 5 her parents divorced, and soon afterward a close friend of the family gave her a stuffed Garfield the cat doll.

Like this one I found on an online auction. I'll remove the picture if asked.

  The giver of the doll soon became her mother's boyfriend and my niece was very fond of him. She loved Garfield until his stripes wore off. She took him to Kindergarten everyday. Soon her father became jealous of the boyfriend and gifted his daughter with a stuffed bear she named Bear Bear. My niece gave up Garfield. Bear Bear became her special toy. You know. that one toy you keep forever.
  Over the years my niece has moved around a bit. She is 38 now, and she has lived in California, North Carolina,Ohio,and repeats of the same, plus who knows where else. On her last move from California she misplaced Bear Bear. She thought he had been accidentally thrown away in the move. That was 5 years ago. She made a trip to visit a friend in California a few weeks ago and guess what?

  Said friend had been holding on to Bear Bear for her for 5 years. Unsentimental Niece was overjoyed to have him back. Maybe I will have to give her a new code name...   

Doll-A-Day 285: Happy Birthday Ivy! and Goldberger "Baby"

  It''s been quite a day. Thank goodness Emma is running everybody back and forth tonight because I don't think it's safe for me to drive! Today is Ivy's birthday, so I had a cake to bake. As I told Ken, Murphy's Law, ("Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."), was in full effect today. From letting an egg roll off the counter and break in the floor, to the cake batter not spreading out in the pan, producing a somewhat dry, (albeit delicious) cow pattie, to the glaze running off the cake and all over the place,to starting to cut and serve the cake before putting the candles on and letting Ivy blow them out, I was on a roll today.(And so was that egg...) It didn't help that I still have some of this cold and woke up feeling nauseous this morning. My back was killing me all day too, but at least the headache that has accompanied this cold seems to be over.
  As I said, today is Ivy's birthday, her 15th in fact.

Ivy's pretend 'sweet' face, during her present opening. The poor kid had to fit her birthday celebration in between 2, when she got out of school,and 4 o'clock, when she was due back for 'play practice'. She'll be a beggar woman in "Les Miserables"  for three nights,starting on Friday night.

In her honour today I was going to feature her favourite small doll, Blue.

Blue on vacation in "Doll Italy", visiting the statue of David, with a strategically placed head... This is a picture from an email Blue 'sent' to Ivy while she was there years ago. She still had most of her hair then.

Blue came to us as a 'Tommy as Colonel Candy' from the Barbie Nutcracker movie, but she was so pretty we decided she must be a girl.

Wow. Did Blue ever have that much hair?!

Ivy was tiny, and only knew one colour: blue, and was naming almost every doll she got about that time 'Blue'. This Blue is the only one that still bears the name though.
  However, when I went to her room to find Blue, she was nowhere to be seen. Also AWOL was Ivy's other favourite, Blue's sister Rose.

Blue and her sister Rose, in a picture from another doll vacation email from "Doll England". These dolls 'travelled' more than I do.

See?! This is Rose and Blue in "Doll Italy" again.

(Rose was originally part of the Barbie and Kelly Bedtime Stories set. Emma and Ivy split the set, with Emma, Ivy's older sister, taking the older sister and Ivy taking the younger sister. They gave them their own middle names, Olivia, and Rose.)

Predictably though, Ivy's favourite bigger doll, "Baby" was on her bed. (Don't tell her friends, but I recently went in Ivy's room late at night and found her curled up with Baby under her chin. Shh...)

"Baby" is a Goldberger doll.

  Baby has been Ivy's favourite doll longer even than Blue and Rose.

She has a vinyl head and limbs,with a cloth body. Her original stuffing was an inflatable pouch that Fuzzy popped by squeezing her too hard when he was little. She was packaged laying on some super soft polyfill stuff because she was supposed to be 'soft as a cloud' or something like that, because she was filled with the inflatable thing. After her pillow popped we stuffed her with her 'cloud', although it has had to be supplemented over the years!

I bought her for Ivy when Ivy was a baby herself. The reason I bought her for Ivy was because at the time, Ivy only had two lower teeth, and blue eyes exactly the colour of Baby's, (Although Ivy's changed to 'green with brown in the middle', as she says.),and they looked alike.

Well, it was cute at the time...

I could put the end of my hair, (since it's long enough to do this...), over Baby's forehead and put Ivy's baby bonnet on her, and it was an amazing resemblance.

Baby was originally wearing a one piece pink suit with matching headband. Ivy, who likes to sew, at some point made her these jammies from an old t-shirt of her own.

That used to be a peace sign on there.

She never quite finished them though. She must have found these PJs while cleaning her room recently, because this is the first I've seen of them on Baby in ages.

As usual, Ken balked at buying Baby, as he does most things. He didn't see that Ivy needed her. I just kept going back to see her though, at the KayBee toy store that used to be in our local mall. Finally I put my foot down and we bought her. I'm glad we did. You never know what's going to become the 'toy love' of your child's life, the toy they'll keep forever, even if they hide it away when they're old enough for it to be embarrassing. Baby became Ivy's. (She hasn't been hidden yet though.)

Since Ivy was tiny when she got Baby, too small to make Baby talk herself,I used to make her talk to Ivy. I gave Baby a crazy voice and something of a Southern accent. I don't know why.

I'm amazed, and a bit disgusted when I see stores selling those ready made 'lovies', usually a tiny blanket with a stuffed animal head attached. You're supposed to buy those for your kid so they don't haul a ratty blanket everywhere. You can't choose what your kid will fall in love with! They'll love what they love. And as far as ratty old blankets go, although Ivy never fell in love with her blankie, my other two had very close relationships with theirs. They both had names, (Somewhat predictable ones: Baa and BaBa.), and went everywhere with them for a while, and are still dearly loved, if not used any more. Emma's even wore clothes, 'ate' plastic food,'drank' with a straw, and was even given a middle name (Rosebells). Yes, they looked a bit gross, especially later in their respective childhoods, but did that really hurt anybody? They were washed regularly, (I have a sweet picture of toddler Fuzz trying to reach Baba as 'he' hung over the shower rail to finish drying.), had a lot of repair work done, (Fuzz always made me leave the piece of satin trim hanging out that got left out in a very early repair. It became known as Baba's 'tail'.),and Baa doesn't even have any pictures you can make out on her any more.But they are full of love. In a fire they're still some of the first things I think they would grab.

She's about 15" tall. Her head is hooked on with a cable tie, and it tends to turn around backwards some times!

Baby is another of those 'fire grabs'.She's been washed many times, but she won't come clean any more. Even her nose has a dirt stain! And look at those finger tips!I think the only way I could get that off is with a baking soda scrub! I'm not sure Ivy would allow it though!

Everybody always loved Baby because the darned thing is just so crazy looking!

So, happy birthday Ivy. From me and Baby.