YEEE-haw! WOOOO-hoo!

And the prize for most annoying Christmas present goes to...the Munchkin Cheerleader doll!

If any of you moms of little girls see a cute little brown-haired cheerleader doll with a big, white "M" on her bright blue uniform, run. Don't let your daughter see it. And whatever you do, DO NOT BUY IT! Your life will never be the same.

Pressing either of her hands or feet or her stomach will send her into a cheer delivered in a pitch just a hair below the limit of human hearing. Oh, and the cheers! It's not just her voice, it's what she says. Here's my favorite cheer:

I stomp my feet
I boogie to the beat
I turn around
I touch the ground
I wiggle it
Just a little bit!

Oh, yes. She's just a tad naughty, isn't she? And there are more where that came from! And I've heard each cheer around 50 times since Christmas Eve night. Everytime she tells me she's gonna beat "the WHOOPsies out of you! The WHOOPsies out of you!" I die a little inside. Each eardrum-puncturing "YEEEhaw!" and "WOOOOhoo!" causes a little more of my sanity to seep out through my auditory canals.

The good news is we ran into one of my neighbors yesterday, and when she heard that we have this doll (apparently Munchkin is sweeping the nation) she assured me the batteries would die fairly soon. When her daughter's doll ran out of juice, she got forgotten about and has been hidden away until the next garage sale. So that some other poor sap will have to endure the cheers.

I should be happy that Ainsley got a toy that makes her happy. We all made our parents nuts with something; for me, it was a laughing box that I loved but that my mother hated. After days of me torturing the whole house with it, I pressed the laughing button and stuck it in my mom's face while she was on the phone and, in a moment of uncharacteristic rage, she jerked it out of my hand and threw it into the next room, shattering it into a dozen little pieces. I bring it up whenever I want her to feel guilty, but now that I am a mom, I completely see it. There's only so much of these things you can take, and I had been warned to keep it away while my mother was on the phone. Ainsley has been warned to keep the Munchkin at a distance (like Canada), but it's a pretty soft doll and I don't think pulling a Joan and giving it a toss if she gets out of line with it would have much effect. I'd have to do something more insidious, like cement shoes and a trip to the Roebling Bridge, but I've seen the "Talking Tina" Twilight Zone episode and know better than to try to kill talking dolls. I better just let things run their course.

And in the meantime, invest in ear plugs.