Getting Andrea's Pal Violet Clean

We got Andrea a My Pal Violet toy from Leapfrog when she turned 6 months old. Price was a little steep but it was a good purchase... the best toy we got for Andrea so far.

Several reasons why I love Violet:

• You can personalize it to say and sing your baby's name (IF... big IF... your child's name is in their database);
• You can personalize it to mention your baby's favorite food, color and animal;
• You can personalize the songs and choose up to 5 day time songs and 5 lullabies;
• It can play lullabies for 10 minutes max... this feature, both Andrea and I really love;
• Violet is super cute and comes in the color violet which little girls seem to like by default;
• Andrea just loves her, especially around the time she turned 8 months. She's be giggly happy when Violet starts "singing" and there was time she can only sleep after we're played Violet's lullabies for a few minutes.

This toy is a sanity-saver for me.

One thing I don't like about this is, it's so difficult to keep clean. My part of the world is humid and dusty. And humidity + dust = grime (???). Anyway, we keep Violet on our bed and it never leaves the bedroom... but after a few months, she wasn't as creamy clean as the new ones we see at the mall. And we couldn't wash her because the instructions said to use only a damp cloth to clean. That damp cloth didn't help Violet's hygiene much.

So a few nights ago, more than 6 months after we got her, I couldn't bear Violet's grimy appearance anymore. Here's what I did to clean her:

1. I used a wet wash cloth and put some of Andrea's baby bath gel on one corner and rubbed the washcloth until I got a nice soapy lather.
2. Using the wet (NOTE: wet, not damp... but not too wet where you get water dripping out of the washcloth... it should be wet, but not dripping) washcloth with the bath gel lather, rub it on Violet's fur. Be careful that one area does not get too wet as to let water seep too much into Violet. Not sure how the mechanism inside is set up, if it's protected from a little dampness or not.
3. To remove the bath gel lather from Violet's fur, used the section of the washcloth without bath gel to wipe it off.

Our Violet's fur came out brighter and creamy clean again after this process and more important... she still works! ;)