Childhood toy - Cabbage Patch Kids

Sometime back in the early 80's ('83? '84?) on my sister's birthday, my sister and I each got our first Cabbage Patch Kid.  Mine had brown hair, blue eyes and freckles.  She was adorable, but came with the unfortunate name, Eleanora Dolores.  I changed her name to Ellie.  I love Ellie.  She and I had many days of fun, parties, chats, and such.  Over the years, I added to my little family.  In the end, I was a Cabbage Patch mom of six.

Ellie Lynn, Peggy Mae, Libby Audrey, Tom Ruben, John Richard and Clayton David

She looks just like my
sweet little Ellie did.

Even at a young age, I loved names and their names were picked with a great deal of thought and search through name books.

Peggy came to me with the name Peg Ruth.  She was a new version of the doll called a Preemie.  I picked her because I loved the name, Peg.  I changed it to Peggy.  It had special family meaning for me.

Libby Audrey arrived with to me with just that name.  I wasn't a huge fan of Libby, but I couldn't find anything else I wanted to call her, so Libby she was.  She had little pink glasses, which sadly got broken pretty early on.  Replacement glasses were never available.  She also had one leg that quite a bit shorter than the other.  I figured she must have had some awful disease before she came to me.

Tom and John were another new version of the doll - Twins!  I had three girls and I wanted boy twins.  I don't remember their original names, but I think Tom Ruben was the original name of the one doll.  I wanted their names to rhyme, so I chose John for the other name.  Yeah, I know, it doesn't rhyme.  Tom and John had matching blue jump suits and auburn colored hair.  They were super cute.

Last was little Clayton.  I actually never liked the name Clayton.  I wanted to name him Colin, but at the time, I couldn't remember the name. Clayton stuck.  The name David was named in honor of The Monkees.  Although Davy wasn't my favorite of the Monkees, his name sounded best with Clayton.  Really, Clayton Micky and Clayton Mike just didn't work.  Clayton Peter would have worked, but I felt David was the better choice.  Plus, I could honor the Monkees without being too obvious.  That means, by the time I got Clayton, I was probably 12 or 13 years old.  Yes, I was still playing with my CPK dolls regularly.

In the end, when I left for college, I left my Kids at home.  I was very sad, years later to discover my mom had thrown them all out.  I wanted to give them to my own children.  Mom's reasons for tossing them were sound.  They were old and not clean.  I think what I regret the most was that I never got pictures of them all.  I think I have a picture of me holding the twins on the day I got them, but the rest, I'm not sure I ever got pictures.  That makes me sad.

I got one for one of my own children, years later.  They didn't love it as much as I had when I was their age.  Oh well, times change and tastes change. Thankfully I have my memories of my first set of kids.  They were much quieter and didn't make messes of the house.  Good times!