My Favorite Childhood Toys

I had a knock-off cabbage patch kid that I called Mary. I LOVED that thing and slept with it every night until I was like 12 and my cousins started making fun of me. Emily and I each got one for Christmas one year and my mother made us each a diaper bag and TONS of clothing to go with them. We even had several outfits that she made us to match our dolls. My mother was amazing!



When I was older I got an American Girl doll for Christmas. I got Samantha but I was getting a little too old for dolls by that point and only played with it for a year or two. What I really enjoyed was sewing cloths for that doll and tot give to my sisters as gifts for their dolls.


I don’t have many other memories of specific toys. We played Barbies a lot but what I really enjoyed was playing pretend and making things. I had delightfully imaginative cousins and all of our games has very intricate plots. If we were playing Barbies for example we would be French Models on vacation in Hawaii for the summer and we spent as much time building beach front mansions out of chairs, books, blankets etc and discussing/creating our back stories as we ever spent “playing.” We once played Jungle Barbie and tied hundreds of pieces of green yarn from the ceiling in my Aunts living room and then hung Barbie tents that my grandmother had made for us and spent the afternoon “swinging” from one “vine” to the next. (We also played Monchhichis this way.) Other days we filled up all of the sinks in my Aunt Sherry’s double bathroom and the tub to play Mermaid Barbie. Other times we played fairies or desert dwellers without dolls building elaborate tents in the basement or in trees in the back yard as “houses.” Yep, I had one very, very, very amazing childhood.