If you were anywhere near a toy store in November, you know what it took to get one of these. It was the only thing on Nora's list, underlined twice. I found it the second week of December at the third store I tried, the last one on the shelf, and I hid it at work until Christmas Eve.

It talks in its own language, and they say it learns English the more you play with it. So far it has learned how to wake up and start chattering every time somebody walks past it in the middle of the night. That's Fred grinning in the back. He knows what I went through.