Tell that to an adopted baby girl from Taiwan who shares a crib with Lia, a huggable doll with black pigtails and half-moon eyes. Or to the child psychologist in Tennessee who is using the velvety Asian doll in sessions with abused children. Or to the local elementary school teachers who incorporate the doll into classes for students learning English.

Tell it to Lia's creator, Raeann Ruth, and her daughter, Amber, whose fingertips are calloused from tying miniature red hair bands on Lia dolls well into the night.

Ruth designed Lia so the Hmong girls who come to her Dayton's Bluff after-school center, Portage for Youth, could have a doll that looks like them. When the doll kept slipping out the door with the enchanted girls, Ruth figured maybe she could sell a few to help fund the cash-strapped not-for-profit program.

She didn't figure on turning her computer room into a doll factory.

In nine months, she's sold 700 dolls, and the orders keep pouring in from as far away as Germany. South High School in Minneapolis decided to sell Lia dolls rather than candy as a fund-raiser this year. Several libraries have purchased the dolls.

And now, Lia has friends. There's Leng, an Asian boy; Autumn and Andre, African-Americans; Coso and Cloe, Latinos; and Bebe and Ben, Caucasians. A Middle Eastern doll is in the works.

Ruth hired the St. Paul company Home Based Industries to cut, sew and stuff the dolls by hand. She and her daughter paint blush on each doll's cheeks, cut the hair and string bracelets with the dolls' names.

"We learned the hard way that 'Autumn' is too long," Amber Ruth says.

But then, mother and daughter are learning everything by trial. "I didn't set out to start a company. I just made a doll," Raeann Ruth says.

Nevertheless, Ruth's doll company, Portage Pals, is poised to turn a profit. The money will be directed to the Portage for Youth.

Recently, Lia and friends were featured in Doll magazine, and Ruth is talking to QVC. So, she's unlikely to get a midnight reprieve from ribbon tying anytime soon.

"That's OK," Ruth says. "These dolls are like our kids."