Toy Week: Nancy

"My whole life, I wanted a Cabbage Patch Doll. I wasn't lacking in childhood toys at all, in fact, I owned, (and still own) nearly every piece of Strawberry Shortcake paraphenalia ever made. Not this new revised version either. The one with the cute dress and the oversized hat and the pink kitten with white polka dots. You know, the cute strawberry shortcake. I have her on a quilt that my grandmothers made for me, and I still sleep with it to this day. She's hangin' out with her ever so cute boyfriend Huckleberry Pie and his dog with the green striped ears. (Now that I am thinking about it, I really need to start making this my halloween costume for next year. How fun would that be!)

But back to the Cabbage Patch doll. It wasn't that I was lacking in 80's era trademark toys, it was actually that my best friend Lindy happened to be the only girl in school with TWO Cabbage Patch Dolls. And somehow, it brought our friendship into question, that she had two and I had none, and every other girl in our class had one. (or so I thought. that's probably not really true.) Of course, the dolls were something like $60, an obscene price tag really. And Lindy only had 2 because her dad tried to buy her love when her parents got divorced, and he bought her a brown haired one that looked like her, and then one day at the bus stop, a school bus ran over Lindy's foot, or something like that. (It wasn't nearly as destructive as it sounds, she was in a cast for a while but she could still walk and stuff. Maybe the bus only sort of rolled while she was getting on. 2nd grade memory is skewed not only by the time that has passed but also by the perceptions of 7 year olds). At any rate, the bus driver felt bad and went and bought her the 2nd one, and he bought her the most coveted doll of all, the blond one, with two pigtails, and her name was "Suzanne". And when I went to her house, we would watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with the Mousketeers and sing the theme song and play with the dolls. She always let me play with the brown haired one, whose name I can't quite remember, because she told me she like the bus driver better than she liked her dad. (Pretty sad, actually, that a little girl would have more love for the school bus driver that ran her over than she would for her own father). Whatever, I was just grateful to be best friends with the girl who had two CPDs and was willing to share with me.

And my childhood was just fine, really. I wasn't scarred by the lack of doll. My mom made me two homemade Cabbage Patch Dolls, they released all sorts of spin offs, like the preemies and the silky-hair version (my sister got one of those) and then there were the garbage pail kids and the whole thing sort of died out. Until last Christmas. I was doing my Christmas shopping when I discovered that they had re-released the original Cabbage Patch Doll, and I was so excited I decided to buy one for each of my nieces. I wandered around target with 3 dolls in my cart for over an hour before I realized as I kept gazing at the dolls that my nieces could care less if they ever got cabbage patch dolls. It was me that wanted one. Somewhere inside of my 32 year old body a 7 year old little girl was still begging with all of her heart. So I did what any reasonable 33-year-old-with-a-7-year-old-

trapped-inside-her would do. I wrote a letter to Santa and I posted it on my blog.

And guess what. Santa reads blogs.

Because this is who greeted me Christmas morning:


She came with a birth certificate and her name is Nola. And she has the Xavier signature on her butt (and the cute little butt dimples under her tiny diaper) and the little belly button, she even smells exactly the way I remember them smelling, and, well, she is just perfect. I even counted her fingers and toes.

I couldn't tell you which part of me is more thrilled, the 33 year old who doesn't have a real baby or the 7 year old who finally got the baby she always wanted. But since we are in fact the same person, let's just say that this year when Santa asked me what I wanted, I honestly couldn't think of a single thing."