"Soy la vaca -- te veo!"

We have learned that an activity's annoyance and/or danger factor is directly related to its popularity -- anyone who has sat through a full episode of Dora the Explorer or has had to yank a plastic bag out of their child's hands knows what I'm talking about -- and Anika's latest accumulation, the result of a full hour inside of Toys 'R Us where I thought I would implode from overstimulation, is no exception.  It may sing songs that have notes so shrill that only our neighbor's dog can hear them, and its "Spanish" switch may feature a Castilian version of the most annoying flight attendant voice EVER, but at least it's not dangerous.

We bought it because a) we didn't want her playing with our laptops anymore (two lost keys and one spit-saturated charger which now only serves to function as a very strange-looking paperweight was enough, thank you very much); b) we needed something at least half as exciting as all of the exposed wall sockets thanks to our completely zen lack of furniture at the moment; and c) she was about to break her nose with all of the walking along the stone fireplace action that was going on the past week or so since we returned from Wisconsin.

Well, our laptops are still enormously fascinating, it's a constant struggle to keep fingers out of sockets, and she has now figured out how to open and slam shut the fireplace doors (a lovely sound, as you can imagine), but at least we have this to entertain her for a full 20 minutes at a go: