Oh the cell phone - how it calls to her!

I think I've posted before about how much Lydia loves cell phones. It's almost an obsession with her. I can't count the number of times she has asked me for one. She's tried so many tactics and whines. My favorite was, "If the tooth fairy brought me a cell phone, would you take it away?" I assured her that the tooth fairy wouldn't bring anything she knew I wouldn't want her to have.

Lalie had an old non-working cell phone of my mom's and Lydia found that several months ago. Well, Lalie hasn't had it back since then. Luckily she doesn't seem to mind. Lydia sometimes carries it around and acts as if it's real, even at the park or other public places - talking to imaginary friends.

The girls are taking Tae Kwon Do now and the other night the instructor was going over the rules on a poster and having kids read them aloud. They are rules like: hair must be tied back, bow before going onto the mat, etc. Lydia kept raising her hand and when finally called on had to admit that she can't yet read. I guess she just couldn't stand not having her hand up in the air. Then, the instructor was taking questions and again she had her hand up. He wasn't too sure he wanted to call on her but finally did and her question wasn't at all about the rules. She asked him if they were allowed to have a cell phone. Needless to say he was a little frustrated. I'm not sure what she was thinking. Maybe she thought if the instructor said it was allowed in Tae Kwon Do that I would get her one?! Certainly not.

So, the fake cell phone just isn't cutting it anymore. It's not a real phone and pushing the buttons doesn't actually make anything happen. Several months ago I found out that Lydia had been using our home phone (not the cell phone) to call people listed in the directory which I had programmed in. I finally heard from my brothers that she'd call them late at night or early in the morning (due to the time difference), sometimes just breathing on the phone. After that news I took all the phone numbers out of the phone except my mom's for emergency purposes. Whenever I need to call someone and I don't know the phone number by heart, I have to get out my address book and look it up. I was just thinking it might be about time that I could safely put them all back into the phone when something happened last night that made me realize we're not yet to that point.

Just Saturday I had had the phone company change out my call waiting for caller ID which I've never had. Last night (Sunday) the phone rang and I went to answer it. Lydia was in the kitchen and yelled that she'd get it but I still answered the set in my room. Nobody was there and when I looked down at the caller ID I could see that it was my cell phone dialing our home phone. So, that meant that Lydia had gotten into my purse, turned my phone on (it was off since we'd been to the movies that day to see HSM 3), and dialed our number. Then she had quickly put the phone back into my purse. Yes, that might seem funny to y'all reading this but was much less funny to me last night I tell you. Although, I did recall that movie where they said, "The call is coming from inside the house!" which gave me a bit of a chuckle. As I started thinking about it today I realized we have had a rash of the phone ringing with nobody on the other end for the past few weeks. Hmmm...

I got on the internet and found the manual for my phone (which is in some pile somewhere in my house), looked up how to lock my cell phone and locked it so no outgoing calls can be made without the code. I tell you, I have learned more electronic parental controls since Lydia has been home than I ever thought I would need.