Searching for dolls

This year, I've been pretty disappointed in dolls. Tonner and Wilde Imagination are no more. Kish and Company swear they still exist but they don't seem to be making dolls anymore. I don't have the patience required to get one of Dianna Effner's Little Darlings. I'm not designed to wait twelveteen thousand years for things. Meanwhile I've gotten increasingly disappointed with the selection of dolls available in big stores at the moment. But I've also insisted on investigating exactly what's available.

I found a small toy store with a great range of Our Generation accessories and mini dolls. I'm not a fan of their 18 inch dolls. Their noses look weirdly adult and their lips generally look like they're about to go into anaphylaxis but I rather like the mini dolls. (Kmart has Our Generation too, but the range is usually very limited and they don't have the mini dolls.) I'm considering getting some of the accessories as props for my 14 inch dolls. I figure they're generally kind of small in scale to the dolls they're meant for so they may work with a smaller doll. I'm also finding that the two big dolls carried by our local Kmart (April and May Lee) are actually growing on me.

I also rediscovered a relatively local toy shop that I loved as a kid because they had heaps of Playmobil and Sylvanian Families and all the european dolls like Corolle and Gotz. They don't have that stuff anymore but they do still have My Scene dolls (including the creepy ones that "grow up") and original Bratz and Hannah Montana and all sorts of extremely outdated stuff in stock. It's not stuff I want (although I was tempted to spend a LOT of money just because "You can't get these anymore!") but it was fun to see.

Almost a toy museum!

We also went to ToysRUs. Usually I find ToysRUs disappointing. I imagine it as a wonderland of toys then find they have the exact same stock as everywhere else. Just more of it. This time I was actually impressed. They had a lot more range than the other places we've been. They had the Disney Princess and Me dolls (Ariel anyway), they had Lalaloopsies, and a whole bunch of dolls I've read about but never seen. I nearly bought one of the Lalaloopsy minis with changeable clothes and wigs, except they only had them in playsets with a styling table or a sewing table and they were fifty dollars which just seemed silly.

They also had this Sylvanian Family furhiture set that made me laugh.

Somehow I think this company and I have different opinions

on what counts as a "working fireplace"

I also discovered a line of Australian 18 inch dolls called Florrie, that I'm really impressed by. (On the other hand, don't even ask my opinion of Australian Girl dolls.) I don't know that I want one but their concept store sounds really amazing and I would like to check it out. 

I've looked into getting a Wellie Wishers doll. I COULD get one through the American Girl website BUT the shipping would be sixty us dollars, effectively doubling the cost of the doll. I'm not sure I can make peace with that.

I'm also finding myself drawn to the Maru and Friends mini pals. They'd fit in well to my doll collection but I still have to find out if they ship internationally.

I ended up spending my birthday money on an Emma Wiggle doll and a Made to Move Barbie. I'm considering doing a mysterious something to Emma (not entirely sure what yet) and switching out the Barbie's head for a more interesting one. (They only had boring, blonde, blue eyed ones with candy pink make-up) Just have to work out how. We don't have heat guns or heat pads and we don't even own a hair dryer, so I'm going to have to do some research and see if it can be done using hot water somehow.

But right now our big thing is the Giant Baby. (As ot should be) We've had a few issues over the last few months with strangers mistaking him for a three or four year old and then openly discussing his behaviour and why he's not talking. Asking if he's deaf or autistic. If we've had him tested. If we've heard about this or that early intervention program.

We know he's behind in talking. But he shows no sign of being autistic or deaf (that I'm aware of) though, and he has only just turned two, so he's not as behind as people think he is. Except the nurse at his two year check up wasn't happy with it so now I'm running around, calling various places and waiting for call backs to arrange hearing and developmental tests and of course freaking out that maybe something is wrong after all. I'm confident that there's not anything wrong but I'm also aware that denial can be pretty powerful in these cases.

He has his first set of tests tomorrow, it'll be great to just get that out of the way.

Weird or not, he's still pretty!

There's something weird going on with the font sizes in this post. I keep changing them to "Normal" but for some reason bits keep showing as "Smallest" no matter how many times I try to change it.