Z has this great little distractor, an old Leap Frog alphabet thingie. Z calls it her “Letters.” She spells her name on it, which was kind of cute the first hundred thousand times.
It looks like this:
It sounds like this:
“Try pressing a letter!”
“Press a letter to hear music!”
“Press any letter to hear its sound!”
“Z! says Zzzzzz.”
The music thing is, I think it goes without saying, highly irritating. And LOUD. No volume control. I keep meaning to give it my duct-tape fix (something I heard from another parent). The Duct-Tape Fix is a highly effective, low-cost way of lowering the volume on annoying toys (cheaper, even, would be removing the batteries). What you do, is find the blasted speaker, and slap a piece of duct tape over it.
The funniest aspect of the Letters is that occasionally, Z argues with the overly-friendly voice.
Letters: Press a letter to hear its name!
Z: I don’t want to!
Letters: Try pressing a letter!
Z: I said I don’t want-
Letters: Try pressing a letter!
Z: Oh! You interrupted me!
I love hearing those arguments. So maybe I shouldn’t smash the toy with a splitting maul just yet.
What I’m listening to now, though, is the tune to “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain” over and over and over and over (keep going) again. It sounds like it was recorded in a windy field with my second-grade flutophone and our out-of-tune piano.
Where’s that duct tape?
Beth Hull 
I try to remember to hide the Magical Musical Thing whenever my cousins (who are far too old to be playing with that toy) or my nephews come over. Their idea of playing it is to hold one note down til infinity, so all I can hear is this loud, “BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” Again, no volume control. I think kids’ toy designers aren’t actually parents.
The arguing with the machine though is adorable.
I love Zoe’s arguing with the machine. It sounds as though she’s much more polite than I am when I argue with my computer.
Pat, that’s because I haven’t taught her those words yet. š
That’s a neat device; all I had was a see-and-say. š
Aw, just record a few of her arguments with the device & THEN smash it to bits š