Telephony

Ian loves telephony.

Pretty-much every day that he's up as I'm leaving for work, he begs me to take my cell-phone with me, presumably so that he can call me any time he wants or needs to. [Asking me to take my cell phone is almost like asking me to take my wallet...]

And he asks the same thing of Amy when she goes on her evening escapes-woops-I-mean-important-shopping-trips. Always with a good deal of urgency.

Since I think technology is the best toy a child can have, I tend to indulge this interest wholesale. For example, he'll ask me, while I'm driving, if he can use the cell. phone, and of course I give it to him. Then he tries to figure out whom he can call, and if I know the person's number off the top of my head, I'll relay it to him digit-by-digit, including details like "now press the green [send] button again].

He likes to call home when we're out and about, and one time he attempted it, logically, by dialing our zip code.

At home, he'll walk up to me with the portable phone in his hand and ask me (in this case, referring to my sister's fiance), "Daddy, do you have Kevin's phone number written down anywhere?" [Yes, he's mostly interested in calling grownups.]

He also likes to leave messages, which usually technical comments like "Daddy, I'm finished leaving my message."

Last Sunday, he tried to call Uncle Andrew to ask him to come play, but in the middle of it all he saw a baby toad hopping by (we were outside), and spent more than half his attention trying to catch it, so the message was a bit choppy.

Sometimes, he'll report to me the recorded message that he got, like in the case of a wrong number, including every single detail of the message down to the recording number:

Once he said, "Daddy, I tried dialing a number, but instead of the phone letting me have the number I was trying to call..." he got the message "I'm sorry but the number you have dialed cannot be connected.. If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again. SP1"

Another time he reported "I tried a different number, and it just didn't let me have that number."