October 20, 2018
Birthday Dolls
Do you have something unique that you do and sometimes you laugh at yourself and think, “this is so silly!” but your family wouldn’t stop it because it means something to them?
For us, one of these “silly family traditions” that I accidently created is the Birthday Dolls.
We have a display of “Growing Up Girls” birthday dolls that represent each of the children’s ages.
Currently it looks like this:
Christina (15), Rebeccah (13), Kimberly (11), Jaquline (8), Jillian (6), Lucas (3), and Anastasia (5).
It started with my collection of age-dolls from when an aunt and cousin bought the first three each of my first three birthdays. I loved them and once I was old enough to make money babysitting and mowing grass, I started collecting the rest of the blonde ones.
Fast forward to when I have two young girls and we didn’t have much display space so Louis suggested I just leave a few out. I left Christina and Rebeccah’s ages. When Kimberly was born, we added the baby one. This became a tradition from then on.
Through twenty-odd years many have broken (by little siblings and my children! Super glue is a porcelain doll’s best friend) a few shattered irreparably, and since my girls are mostly brunettes, any replacements we tried to find with brunette hair. When Anastasia was about 2, she wanted to add her “age” to the dolls – so we added her age doll. Lucas came along and I discovered the same company made “Growing Up Boys” age dolls so we started collecting those as well!
I always check resale and thrift shops for any ones I don’t have (right now, boys from 7 up).
Just a cute little story about how a collection became a family tradition. (Yes, they have already planned that I’ll have to buy more of those to display my grandchildren’s ages someday.)
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~Nancy Tart