My cousin Molly

My cousin Molly is the cutest little blonde, surfer girl, beach kid to the core.  The best thing about her is that she can have full fledged conversations with a room full of teenagers and still want dolls for Christmas.  This year, she specifically asked for a certain doll that is armed with the latest technology.  It cries and you have to rock it, it might even wet its pants and you have to change it.

Apparently, this is the same doll used in school in health class (private schools… these dolls are expensive) during the safe sex talks.  I guess the teachers hope that if each student in their class can experience a life-like doll for 72 hours straight and be graded on how long the thing cried before they picked it up, how often it cried during the night, and whether or not you fed it, then the students would be less likely to have sex.

I remember when my little brother brought it home.  It comes with a key that the teacher ties around your wrist with a band that you simply cannot take off until she cuts it.  So you have no choice but to stay with the doll 24 hours a day.  No babysitters. No parents sitting with it while the kid goes off and hangs out with his friends.  My brother went surfing one day and my mom had to send him hand signals from the beach when it started crying because you have to insert the key before rocking, changing its diaper, or holding it will begin to calm the thing down.  Without the key, it just keeps crying and your grade keeps falling.

The one thing that will get you an automatic fail on this project is the neck.  The baby’s neck snaps backward if you don’t support it and boom: your baby now has permanent brain damage and you failed health class.

When Cameron had his doll for the weekend, we rigged some cardboard around the baby’s head and neck, then taped the cardboard all the way around the thing’s head so that it was virtually impossible to move it’s neck, much less snap it backwards, thus eliminating the possibility of brain damage.  He didn’t sleep at all during the days he had that stupid doll.  It cried all night.  Seriously, all night.  Every 20 minutes or so.  Horrible.

So anyway, Molly for some strange reason, wanted this doll.  (I don’t know, it seemed like a lot of work for a doll, but Molly opened up that box and nearly cried over seeing her new doll inside.)  If you can believe it, it’s actually not a very popular doll for kids… go figure… so Laurie had to search and search and search to find it online.

And then she found it: “Baby Think It Over“.