Kid You Not

Except, although these interactions are real, the babies are not. They look, feel and smell like real babies, but they are dolls. Expensive, stunningly realistic dolls. Hall just got Amiryal on sale for $650. Some dolls in this genre cost nearly $2,000.

This is the Doll and Teddy Bear Expo. Over the weekend, some 6,500 people paid $15 each to stroll through the convention hall of Washington's Marriott Wardman Park Hotel and see all that is hip in the world of dolls and teddies (not dolls wearing teddies; that's another convention, usually held in Las Vegas.)

These realistic babies are not your Cabbage Patch Kids or Betsy Wetsies. These are eerily authentic works elegantly handcrafted by artists, such as Carol Kneisley, who used to be a schoolteacher and seamstress but now is a modern-day Geppetto. In the world of baby dolls that capture the realistic form and shape of actual babies, she plays God.

Kneisley's dolls, like those sold by a few other vendors here, look unsettlingly real, from their little fingers and toes to the wrinkles around the kneecaps and the curves of their cheeks. These babies weigh the same as actual babies, have the same neck-support issues as real babies, wear the same clothes as actual babies. To create the dolls, Kneisley uses pictures from hospital Web sites (which would explain the two babies with realistic-looking, freshly cut umbilical cords with the clips still attached), magazines and "my grandbabies." She works in Cernit and Super Sculpey polymer clays; other makers use silicone. For the hair she uses mohair. The eyes are made of glass. On average, it takes three days to a week to finish a doll.

Kneisley, 62, flew in 12 babies from Eugene, Ore. She placed them all in blankets, then in bubble wrap, and then stuffed them neatly into suitcases for her flight. And had it not been for a "funky" scanner at the Reno airport, they all would have made it here safely.

"The suitcase went through the machine over a part, hit a wall and then bam ," says her husband, Tom, in front of their booth. "Hannah suffered a broken leg and David has two broken arms."

Both babies are preemies.

"When she opened the suitcases, she just cried and cried and cried," Tom says. "I tried to give her as many hugs as she needed. I am all for airport security, but . . ."

He doesn't complete his sentence; he just finishes putting David's fractured leg back into his gown. And sits him back up on the table next to Hannah.

Sitting near Hannah is a very unhappy-looking Andrew, and next to him is Sherry Berry, with a permanent sourpuss face. She's wearing a green jumpsuit and a beaded name bracelet. A small tag lets onlookers know that Sherry and her fussy face can be theirs for $1,000.

"I try to focus on dolls that are less than 2 months old," says Kneisley. "So they don't smile, they just kind of grimace."

When someone asks Hannah's age, Kneisley lifts the child's shirt and looks at the darkly tinted bellybutton.