I have an heirloom dollhouse that I have been saving for my two great nieces. I sent it with my niece and her husband when they stopped to visit us on their cross-country move from Seattle to Philadelphia. At the time, one of her daughters was about three, and she was newly pregnant with the second, so we agreed that they would save the dollhouse for a time when the girls were old enough to appreciate it.

This is the year.

It’s a big dollhouse, made of wood, with wallpapered rooms and big muntined windows. I think it dates to the early 1950s. I was not the first little girl to play with it. It had belonged to my father’s cousin, and then to her daughter.

I thought it would be nice to include a set of the right sized dolls. I had no idea how difficult this would turn out to be.

I tried the hand-made website; and the auction website; I visited the very few actual toy stores. Nothing quite right. They had dolls, but they were either hideously plastic or one step up from corn husks. Nothing that simply had a nice face and reasonably-shaped body.

So, reluctantly, I turned to the Seattle guys. They do have dollhouse dolls. But you know how the algorithms are. Even if you reject something it keeps showing up in your feed. There is no Boolean method of saying “But not that”. And there is a series of dolls that, at first glance, seemed nice. The dolls come in different ethnicities and ages. But the longer you look at them, the weirder they become.

Do you see what I mean?

I showed them to my friend at lunch to see if she noticed. Maybe it was just me. But, no. She started laughing. “What is with their crotches?”

Exactly. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it. And it doesn’t really make any sense, either. I mean…never mind.

My friend texted me later with a suggestion of some animal family dolls she came across. One great niece will get a kangaroo family, and one will get a giraffe family. They will have to co-inhabit.

Close enough.