Cell phone madness strikes home

Both Prince and Princess have one or two kids in their class that have cell phones. (Remember, they are only 10 and 8.) Deacon has a plan to earn his own money and buy a phone by saving his allowance. I do love how he offers to get the mail or sweep the walkway for an extra quarter a day. I don't think that he truly understands how far away $5 a week is from $80 a month.

Princess has a different plan. She once saw a commercial where the daughter talked the parent's ears off and they gave her a cell phone so that she would talk to someone else. This has become her plan. This has been my experience for the past few months.

I will give her, she is persistent. You might remember this photo of her last year, out in public, talking out loud on her toy cell phone to her imaginary friend.

This is her talking on my cell phone with Grandpa about her Christmas list. Such pure joy written all over her face.

Trust me, after months of listening to every thought that has passed through her mind, I am starting to think a cell phone is a good idea. I was able to hold out long enough, however, for her to stop trying to persuade me and start working on Tom.

I left her alone with Tom for an hour to run to the store and before I got back, this is the email I received.

"We were talking about phones and Princess just ask me how old I was when I got my first phone. I told her 35. Her eyes got big and she said "really?" Then she asked "was it was embarrassing?" I said "of course not...why would it?" She said "because some people say the rule is that you get a cell phone when you are 13. But I think it doesn't matter how old just how grown up you are." Then she paused and asked "you think I am pretty grown up don't you?". Of course I didn't tell her that cell phones weren't invented until I was 35."

The cordless home phone as been the closest she can get to a cell phone and she carries it around the house with her. Last week, I drove to the end of the street to get hot dog buns for lunch. In the 8 minutes it took me to go to the store, purchase the bread and make it back to the house, princess called me twice from the home phone and talked to me for 3 minutes each time. Nothing was wrong, she just wanted to talk on the phone and felt empowered by the ability to contact me whenever she wanted.

Tom just laughed when I told him about this, so while he was out of town this week, he asked our little princess to call him after dinner and before bedtime. She was so thrilled he wanted her to call him. We didn't quite live up to the plan of twice a day, but she did love coming down, picking up the phone and calling him. We are still working on the leaving voicemail messages and dialing the number correctly. If she thought her cell phone depended on it, she will have this technology perfected by Sunday.