"Did I make a stinky?"

It's summer, I'm lazy, don't feel like writing anything, but just had to share with you, my faithful friends, the bare facts about a doll that used to be popular a few decades back. A doll that keeps being reissued, with refinements, I guess.

There are lots of far more graphic videos of this thing in which little girls check its diaper and find a slimy mess of ingested material (begging the question: how do you clean this thing out so it won't be full of rotting food? Does Mommy have to stick it under the tap and flush it out?) But instead I thought I'd lazily append a detailed Wikipedia entry in fairly bad English, which nevertheless gives us the basic facts of this incredible artifact.

In all the ads I saw, the doll's feces is called "whoops", "an accident", or other coy terms. My kids' childhood would have been a lot easier for me if they had produced "whoops" every day.

I apologize for the length of this, but it seemed too astonishing to touch. Just read the parts that disgust you the most.


Baby Alive is a baby doll made by Hasbro that eats, drinks, wets and in some cases messes. Its mouth moves and is supposed to be lifelike, as the brand name suggests. It was originally made and introduced by Kenner in 1973, and reintroduced by Hasbro in 2006. Today, Baby Alive is offered in Caucasian, African-American, and Hispanic varieties. The newest versions include Wets & Wiggles (male or female), Sip 'N Slurp, Sip N Snooze, Pat N Burp, Baby Alive learns to potty, and baby go bye-bye.

History

1970s-1980s

The first Baby Alive doll was introduced by Kenner in 1973. It could be fed food packets mixed with water, and came with a bottle, diapers, and feeding spoon. The spoon would be inserted into its mouth, and a lever on its back pushed to have it chew the food. The food would move through her and end up in her diaper; this version did not speak, so you had to check the diaper a few moments after feeding. It also produced droppings and threw up regularly.

1990s

In 1992 the first talking Baby Alive doll was produced. It was fed in the same manner, but swallowed automatically without the need for a lever, and used a potty instead of a diaper. There were sensors located inside the doll to detect what stage the food was at, and trigger its voice to say "I have to go potty" or "All done now". These dolls did not sell well due to the loud gear noises and her "deep adult voice".

It was later discontinued, and a non-speaking baby was released in 1995 with snacks and juice boxes, although these came in boxes and cans rather than packets that were mixed with water. They, as opposed to modern Baby Alive doll food and juice, had names such as Yummy Juice and Baby Cherries. It only came in two versions, Baby Alive and Baby All Gone.

It appeared as a doll with blue eyes and messy curly blonde hair, not dissimilar to the modern doll, although the 1990s version seemed more traditional and less "cartoon-ey". Nowadays, Baby All Gone is fed bananas instead of cherries, and the juice is given from a bottle instead of a juice box, which saved on cardboard waste from empty boxes.

A doll was introduced called Juice & Cookies Baby Alive who could be fed juice from a box, and cookies could actually be made, when a mix was put in a triangular mould, baked and removed with a scoop. The doll drank and chewed automatically.

Newborn dolls

Sip 'N Slurp, A baby which when her tummy is squeezed she "drinks" from her juice cup with a straw attached and "wets" her diaper. A Sip 'n' Slurp birthday doll was released in 2008 is the same principle as sip n' slurp, but her birthday can be celebrated everyday because she can "blow" on her party blower and "blow" out a candle on her cupcake she has a cup with attached straw just like the Sip 'n' Slurp.

Wets 'N Wiggles, This doll comes in either a girl or a boy and is given juice and lets you know it is wet by crying and wiggling and then the diaper is changed. Unlike the other dolls, it does not speak.

Pat 'N Burp, A newborn baby that "drinks" from her bottle and when pat or squeezed, she "burps". She can come in numerous skin and eye colors.

Sip 'N Snooze, A baby that gets "sleepy" as you feed her a bottle and gets snuggled when she falls asleep. She can come in blonde or brunette hair colors.

Speaking toddler dolls

Baby Alive Learns to Potty: A new potty training version of the doll, where the baby gets fed and is given a bottle and tells you when she has to go potty by saying phrases such as "Potty time!" or "Hurry-hurry!", and she "goes" when the food and water move through her, but she has a diaper just in case and then she says "oops! I had an accident" if she is not put on the potty in time.

She also says "I'm a big girl" or "I love you, Mommy", says "Yummy!" or "Mmm, good!" when she is fed with her doll food or from her bottle, and sings a discordant version of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Also, she has a learning feature, where she gets better at using her potty after each feeding. She will ask to use it twice after the second feeding before she goes in her diaper, and so on until the fifth feeding.

Baby Alive Baby's New Teeth: A doll who is "teething". If her tongue is pressed, new teeth will appear. She has a special teething chew ring, and if you give her a teething cookie she will actually "take a bite". She drinks from her cup and then wets her diaper. She comes with a toothbrush and toothpaste so the child can "brush" them.

Baby Alive Changing Time Baby: she can be fed a doll food paste made from a powder, and given a bottle of water. They move through her and end up in her diaper, which is then changed.

Baby Alive Real Surprises: A doll who eats her doll food and drinks from her bottle, and then wets and messes her diaper afterwards saying "Uh-oh! I made a poo-poo" or "I made a stinky!" or "Surprise!". She talks, sucks her pacifier and sings a discordant version of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". Many people make handmade bottles, doll food and pacifiers for these dolls instead of using those designated.

Baby Alive Bouncing Babbles: A doll who can bounce up and down, operated by a small internal motor, and which makes giggling and cooing sounds.

Baby Alive Better Now Baby: A doll who is ill and needs treatment. She drinks water from a cup, and then wets her diaper. She is given medicine and the child can "check her up" as if they are a doctor caring for a patient.

Baby Alive Bye bye, Baby: A doll that is designed for travel by having a papoose and baby carrier in one unit.

Baby All Gone: a doll who is fed "bananas" on a magnetic spoon and makes them "disappear", although the food and drinks do not move through to minimise mess caused by doll food moving through. They seem to go into the doll's mouth when they are mechanically retracted back into the spoon. Also, she drinks juice from her bottle, although this doll, unlike other Baby Alive dolls, does not wet. The juice, although seeming to disappear, is also retracted back into the bottle instead of being consumed and moving through.

My Baby Alive: a doll who is fed powdered doll food mixed with water and water from her bottle. She makes a belching sound, wets and messes her diaper, and then asks "Did I make a stinky?". She comes in numerous skin, eye and hair colours.

Baby Alive dolls at present are more sophisticated than those of the past, including a stationary bracelet with a button, which when pressed activates the doll to say a phrase, a moving mouth which opens when it senses its special magnetic spoon, bottle or pacifier, or it speaks, and large cartoon-like eyes which can be programmed to open and close, rather than traditional closing eyes when the doll is put down.

Criticism

On January 22, 2009, Baby Alive Learns to Potty was nominated by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood for its 2009 TOADY (Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young children) Award.^[1] Saying it will "Ruin your girl's creativity" and also criticizing the cost of refills. It lost, however to one of the latest Barbie dolls.

A horse is a horse is a horse

Last week I had a wonderful riding experience on Vancouver Island at Tiger Lily Farms. I got to ride Bentley, a lovely roan Quarter horse with an amiable personality and a penchant for grabbing leaves that brushed his nose over the trail. Oh how I wish. How I wish I could've taken Bentley out on my own, for a nice meander and perhaps a canter or even a bit of galloping, but this isn't an option for me now. Riding for an hour with a guide cost $40.00, which seemed like a lot until I checked prices around here and found out they're $55.00 per person per hour, minimum booking of four, with a $100.00 deposit.

Did I appreciate having a horse of my own when I was age 10 - 13? Of course not. I am embarrassed to say I eventually lost interest. I was in high school and it wasn't cool to be horsy then. Rocky wasn't a registered anything, certainly not a Quarter horse like Bentley (though I used to say he was "1/4 Quarter horse"). He was a trail horse well-trained to tolerate any kind of rider, even a kid who steered him into some pretty bad situations (like being stuck to the shoulder in a mud-wallow).

I realize in these primitive archival photos that he seems to have too big-of-a-head, which he really didn't. The style of his mane could be described as a Mohawk, more for ease of grooming than anything else (I think his unshaven mane would have been a tangled jungle in which curry-combs would have been lost forever). He was what was called a strawberry roan, a sorrel (redhead) with a lot of creamy white sprinkled through his coat, especially on his face and rump(though it's hard to see it here).

My mother used to say "Rocky has a pink-and-grey face." I remember a kind eye and a rubbery nose perfect for kissing.  He was a "character" who would prance around the pasture trying to evade the bridle (prance? My ass - he was putting it on to annoy me). If we crossed a stream, he would stop and splash vigorously with a foreleg until I steered him the other way.

He once broke out of my back yard and took off like a shot (back yard? Yes, these photos were taken when I had the bright idea of riding him the 2 miles or so from the boarding stable to my house). My Dad said, "I didn't think that horse was so fast." He was a strawberry blur, his hoofs clopping the pavement at a furious rate, and by the time our car caught up with him he was contentedly munching hay in the barn, his coat unusually dark with exertion.

I think horses have taken on an almost mythical significance to me. I was born in the Year of the Horse (not that I believe in such things!) and have come to see the horse as a symbol of absolute freedom. Even the most highly-trained have a streak of wildness in them, much as cats do. The quietest horse can spook (as Rocky did once, seeing a gum wrapper on the trail, causing me to say, "You idiot, you're doing that on purpose").  I have sat on bolting horses, horses who tried to scrape me off under a tree branch, and I stayed on. Not because I'm a good rider - I'm not, particularly - but because I feel like I'm one with them. Or one of them? Almost.

Margaret, are you grieving?

To a young child

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By & by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep & know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Baby Laugh-a-lot!

OK, I got carried away today. I dredged these ads up for my 7-year-old granddaughter, she of the gappy teeth and amazing mind. She loves this kind of nostalgia and makes video ads of her own, with Chatty Cathy saying all sorts of subversive things. This one is the limit, I think. Nowadays parents can find the battery chamber and disable toys like this, but this one. . . it's a whole new definition of crazy.

As for the others, I was aghast at Barbie and her pooping dog, and even more taken aback by Willie Wee-Wee or whatever it is, a little boy's peeing penis on full display. I remember there was a Baby Joey when Gloria had a baby on All in the Family, and there was a huge dispute about it because he was anatomically correct. I think they pulled it off (excuse me) the shelves and/or neutered him. So how did this little devil get by the censors?

The Meow Mix one. . . what can I say. It sends my grandkids into peals of laughter every time.

Up north

My mother had a funny way of saying things

she'd pronounce them a little off,

and when she'd start talking about "going up north"

we knew she meant "up at Bondy"

her name for our paradise.



I don't know if the perceptions of children are
compressed because of their short time on earth,
or infinitely vast, as yet unimpeded by "you can't" and "don't".

"Up at Bondy" meant Nancy and Brian
and a couple of weeks of unlimited freedom
and running around in our bathing suits
jumping off the dock


the magic of July nights
of bullfrogs booming like bassoons

of lying face-up on the swell of the hill
and staring at stars ripped free of all veils,
with the eerie music of loon-flutes quivering.


I can't tell you about the smell of small-mouth bass
in a pail, fishy and sandy
and fried up in butter
and heady smells of bacon
and burnt coffee
and the perpetual barbecue.
Great slabs of meat, porterhouse steaks
and kippers for breakfast
I don't remember eating anything else
but potato chips and brandy snaps.


Bondi was playing horses with Nancy
(we wanted a horse so bad we could die)
we knew it would never happen
so we would BE horses
prance like wild things on the ridge,

not knowing we'd never
be this carefree again


I can't express a summer in my mind,
the smell of lakewater, Noxzema cream
on burnt skin,
and a Camelot built from wet sand.
I can't express a memory
of a red bathing suit
and a baby kingbird
somehow, impossibly sitting
on my outstretched hand

like some Bondi falcon.

I learned lore from Nancy
whose grandfather was an opera singer
and when it rained, we'd
climb up the shelves of the linen closet
into a hole, an attic trove
of old things, dusty costumes
and dried-out makeup kits
from Gilbert and Sullivan productions


a gramophone you had to crank
and impossibly old records:
Keep the Home Fires Burning
My Little Grey Home in the West
(and our favorite)
A Cornfield Medley
which was shockingly racist:
"Some folks say dat a nigger don't steal. . . "
We saw that the record
thick like a slab of slate
had grooves on only one side
No one had thought to record on the other side
and I was later to learn it was made
in the 1800s

when sound in a bottle was still a miracle.


The two weeks "up at Bondy" blew by too fast
Nancy and Brian went back to being
the owner's kids,
and even on this day they own it,
still own Bondi:


it exists in an unchanged form
that seems like time suspended.

Humans hang on to Paradise, to a
place or state of mind eternal
as if it represents the ultimate reward,
finally, finally letting down the burden
of constant change.


I would go back to Bondi,
I will go back to Bondi,
and I know I will find it pristine,
with a few things added, a horse arena here,
an indoor swimming pool there,
so people don't need to rely on the weather;
Nancy and Brian still live there, but they
aren't the Nancy and Brian of old,

nor can they be,

any more than I am that child who dreamed
she was a ridge runner

and held a bird in her hand.

http://www.bondi-cottage-resort.com/

Fly, ladybug, fly!

God, it's Monday again - hardly seems possible after the social whirl of the weekend. Oh all right, I went to one party. But it was a humdinger. Nothing can equal a granddaughter's birthday for sheer shrieking fun.

The only thing more heart-touching than seeing a sweet little blondie, just turned five, flying on a swing set with her honeyed hair in a blur behind her is seeing her sister, not quite three, taking a violent header down a slide, landing hard on her bum, standing up, brushing her hands together and calmly walking on to the next activity.

That's Lauren. When a child has a serious illness, parents like to say things like, "It was meant to happen" - not that the child was meant to be sick, of course, but that they were especially chosen to be the recipients of a peculiar sort of daily blessing, one that sometimes relegates them to the outer fringes of so-called normalcy.

This little Lauren was diagnosed with juvenile onset diabetes at age 15 1/2 months. Her parents knew something was terribly wrong with her, but the doctors kept insisting it was flu. By the grace of God, Mom kept putting her foot down and saying, "No. No. It's something more serious, and you'd better find out what it is NOW."

When they finally found out, they rushed her to Children's Hospital in Vancouver post-haste, and admitted her. A baby with this disease is in mortal peril, and when my son phoned me with a shaky voice and said, "She'll have this for the rest of her life," nobody knew exactly what that conclusion was going to mean.

Let me quote a statement her Mom wrote to promote the 2010 Walk to Cure Diabetes in June: "Lauren is a trooper; she receives insulin needles every day and has her fingers poked by a lancet 5 to 9 times daily to test her blood sugar levels. She eats food that is calculated so the food carbohydrates match her insulin dose at set times of the day. This is necessary to keep her blood sugar levels in check to prevent dangerous highs and lows. This is everyday life when living with this disease."

We're never unaware of diabetes when Lauren comes to our house; she needs to be "checked" at least a couple of times, and fed according to her levels. But by the same token, we're never unaware of her spirit, her bust-out laugh and merry blue eyes and sparkly smile, and her incredible steadiness in the face of something that might emotionally flatten a child with a whiny disposition or even an adult.

I know I wouldn't be this gracious about it; in fact I'd probably be complaining loudly, or slowly turning bitter. Of course, one can say that she's still too young to really know what is going on. Next month she'll turn three, and she won't be able to eat her own birthday cake. Her parents aren't sure how they will handle issues like that in the future. One step, one day at a time.

She will be using an insulin pump in the next few months, but contrary to popular belief, that doesn't automatically take care of the problem. Myself, I don't trust technology and wonder if it isn't better to monitor this thing by hand. But then, she's not my child. She is my beloved, my irreplaceable grandchild, yes. But I don't make the major decisions (which is probably just as well).

When we go on the walk, we'll do it as a family at the Greater Vancouver Zoo. This will be our second year. Lauren's team is called the Ladybugs, and I've already made ladybug pompoms (Lauren loves what she calls "bum-bums"!) for the occasion. Last year the event was beyond fun: it gave us a sort of glow, quite indescribable. All these walks for this and that, which sometimes seemed a little extreme, suddenly made sense to us.

Nobody expects serious illness to invade their family, least of all in a child. But if it has to happen, one couldn't do better than to see this plucky little girl, a girl who literally seems to bounce when she falls down and almost never cries, courageously living with a difficult, scary condition.

She'll never really be able to eat with total pleasure and abandon. She'll have to keep track of her "levels" and pay a lot of attention to how she feels. For the rest of her life. Meantime, she has made more than a good start, and inspired all of us with her valour, her good humour and her joy in living.

She has always reminded me of those Disney cherubs in Fantasia. Like bumblebees, there's just no way they could fly with wings that tiny. But they do it. They do it because no one told them that they couldn't.