Sunday, November 29, 2009

I Remember


...being in grade two and really, really wanting a Cabbage Patch Kid. Back in the 80s, Cabbage Patch Kids were the biggest rage! My Mom scoured the stores and all the Cabbage Patch Kids were out of stock.

When I was a kid, my parents never just gave us toys or treats for no reason. We had to earn our prized possessions. They taught us from an early age that hard work reaps its rewards. Whether it be by doing some kind of chore and earning our allowance (which was like fifty cents a week or so when we were little!) or getting straight A's in school, we always had to earn the things we really wanted. For my brother, it was Transformers. For me, it was a Cabbage Patch Kid.

On the day I brought my report card home with straight A's (I think there was a B+ in there, but it was close enough to straight A's), my parents were very proud of me. My prize? You guessed it! A Cabbage Patch Kid! My poor Mom had to practically wrestle another woman in the store for the last one!

Alyssa Lisette was the name written on my Cabbage Patch Kid's birth certificate. Though she wasn't the one I wanted (for some reason, I wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid with long, blond pig tails and blue eyes. Alyssa Lisette had short curly hair. Despite the fact that she wasn't the one I wanted, she was the one I loved. I had worked hard all school year to get her...and my Mom had a hard time getting her for me.

That memory always stuck in my mind. It reminds me of how sweet the rewards are when you work hard and wait for it. When things are just given to us, we don't appreciate them as much as when we have to work and wait to get them.

This Cabbage Patch Kid memory just resurfaced when my cousin (one of Little One's godfathers) gave Little One her very first Cabbage Patch Kid for her first birthday. Too sweet!

9 comments:

J said...

Too cute. We have two cabbage patch kids...one still in the box from way back when. Ted was disappointed to look on eBay and discover that we weren't going to be able to retire by selling it.

Maya has 4 (yes, four) American Girl dolls. Two given by indulgent friends of mine, both of whom wanted girls and didn't get them. One given by us, in lieu of a party or other gifts that year. Her favorite? The one she bought herself, with money she earned cat-sitting for neighbors. :)

Unknown said...

J:
Okay, so I think I've been living under a rock for the past decade or so. What are these American Girl dolls all of my American friends are talking about? I guess I'll have to Google it!

I checked out a link Starshine posted about her friend's site. Her friend makes dresses for little ones and even makes matching dresses for their American Girl dolls! I'm going to have to see what all this talk is about :)

The CPK that LO was given for her b-day is so cute. It's smaller than the original CPKs and you don't know the gender of the CPK until you open up the cabbage leaf they're in. Too cute. Reminded me of LO since we didn't find out the gender of our baby. We wanted a surprise :)

It's so cute when LO hugs her CPK. Check her out...clutching the box that her CPK is in! :)

Good for Maya! I love that her fave was the one she bought with her hard earned cat-sitting money! Way to go, Maya!! :)

J said...

American Girl dolls are stupidly expensive dolls that are very popular here with girls in elementary school...maybe grades 3-6? Maya doesn't play with hers, never did much. They're more collectible type things. They come with books that tell the story of that particular American Girl, and they are all based on different eras in American history. Except the ones that you can buy that are supposed to look like you, rather than the historical fiction ones. Maya has two historical fiction ones, and two that are supposed to look like her, though they look different from each other. ;) They're almost $90 each, so crazy expensive, but I will admit that they are very well made, as are the accessories that go with them. If I had to choose between an American Girl doll and a Barbie, I'd go AG every time. Though they're a slightly different age group, I guess.

Maya LOVED her cabbage patch doll, which was one that Ted was given by his mom when he was 18 or something. Not that he wanted one particularly, but I guess she was caught up in the craze. She love him and named him "Baby Boy". He was a premie, and the name on the box was "Judd Jordon". He was a twin. His sister is still in her box.

J said...

American Girl: http://www.americangirl.com/index.php

caninecologne said...

hi c - i remember cabbage patch dolls as well but i was in jr high and way too old to play with dolls.

i like that your daughter's doll is brown skinned and brown eyed! cute! she doesn't need any hangups about aryan beauty since that's all that barbie and all that princess crap shove down little girls' throats nowadays. they may try to make "multicultural" dolls but the features are still exactly like barbie. Barbie needs to get some Asian friends too! ha ha.

as for the american girl dolls, i agree with J - they are ridiculous and overpriced. i believe there's a "salon" somewhere (NY I think) where you can take our doll in and get its hair done and buy outfits and all this other crap. OMFG. No way, huh. there's also a "doll hospital". i remember my friend and i giving our malibu barbie (mine) and marie osmond (hers) dolls "haircuts" - mohawks to be exact. i wonder if the doll hospital can fix that.

tc had a small baby doll i bought for her when she was still a toddler. even though it was a girl, for some reason, she named it "jonathan". she dragged the doll everywhere and would pretend to feed it, burp it, etc. she still has it in her room on a shelf.

word ver:
premin

Dee said...

I still have my CPK. His (yes i got a boy one because all the girls were sold out and impossible to get!!) name was Roland and I changed it to Randy because my friends made fun of his name (how stupid looking back). I gave him to E but he didn't like Randy so I'm giving him to M soon. Mine even had the original diaper it came with my when I picked up the doll one day the diaper disintergrated. The bum is signed by Xavier Roberts and everything.
I loved my doll to bits!! all the kids in my grade would bring thier dolls to school (we were already in grade 5!! even the boys had them- can you imagine that happening now?!?!)
My parents just told me they got one for M for Chanukah. I'm so excited for her to have a new one and to play with my old one!!
We are trying to teach E that he can't get everything he wants but it so hard to stick to that !! It really takes a lot of restraint not to spoil the kids-especially when they look at you with their big doe eyes and you want to give them the world!

Word Ver: pigsings (no joke!!!)

Unknown said...

J:
Thanks for enlightening me on the American Girl thing! Wow! That's crazy! Soooo expensive...and a doll hospital too? Wow.

I still remember the Cabbage Patch craze as if it were just yesterday. EVERYONE I knew had one. I had all the accessories for Alyssa Lisette. I had a baby carrier, stroller, diaper bag...you name it, I had it! I even had one of those baby books for her. You know, the ones you put all baby's "firsts" in and include photos, etc. LOL! Too funny.

I ended up getting 7 CPKs in total since my Dad bought us a Coleco Vision (remember those game consoles? Kind of like Atari) and there was this promo where when you buy a Coleco Vision, you get a free CPK. Well, we never got one, so my parents wrote a letter to Coleco and they sent us a CPK. I think there was a mistake because every day that week a new CPK arrived at our house!!! We had 7 CPKs by the end of the week (7 including the one I already had).

I always thought it was funny how all the CPKs had such odd names. You know, out of all of the CPKs I had, my Alyssa Lisette was my fave and most loved. Like Maya, perhaps it is because I had to work for it.

Unknown said...

Canine:
Funny you noticed that! My cousin and his fiancee picked out the CPK because they wanted it to be as close to LO as possible. They chose darker skin and brown eyes because she looked a little like LO. They also tried to get the birth certificate with the same birthday as LO's. The closest they had was November 15th. LO's b-day is November 11th. Close enough :)

HAHA! Too cute that TC named her baby doll "Jonathan"!!

Unknown said...

Dina:
Roland, eh? I have a preemie CPK that was named Alexis Reginald. He was a boy, but I wanted a girl. I gave him a new name (I can't even remember what the name was) and thereby giving my CPK a sex change.

Ohhh sooo cool that M is getting a CPK for Chanukah! My cousin and his fiancee said, "Every little girl needs her own CPK" when they gave LO hers for her b-day :) I think I was more excited than LO! She was in love with the box! LOL!

pigsings, eh?! :)

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City girl moves to the country, falls in love, and marries a farmer. She tries to incorporate her city ways with her new country lifestyle and blogs to keep in touch with friends, family & students who live far, far away :) Can this city girl go country? Watch as she learns all sorts of exciting things about life on the farm and in a small rural community. *UPDATE* We are now parents! Our baby girl was born on Nov. 11, 2008 (at 28 weeks gestation- 12 weeks premature, but she's quite the trooper)!!!
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