My toddler is a teenager

My daughter is already showing signs of teenageritis - and she's not even two.

Her shoe shopping expedition was cute. That's not what I'm talking about. This problem is getting ugly. She LOVES phones.

Sure, it started out cute. In fact, Grace learned to crawl by placing a cell phone just out of her reach. The love grew from there. With her imagination, everything became a phone: her hand, shoes, crayons, sweet potatoes. She hold them up to her ear and carry on a conversation with who I assume was Mickey Mouse.  When she started walking, she would pace with a phone (or sweet potatoes) to her ear, waving her free hand from time to time to emphasize the REALLY important gibberish point she was making. She would pause to hear the other end of the conversation, laugh, and then continue her gibberish. Like I said, cute.

Now, like her father, she has become picky about technology. Her Leap Frog cell phone is too baby for her. Her deactivated adult cell phone doesn't hold a charge. She wants - nay - must have the real thing. She even knows how to unlock an iPhone to get to the good stuff. If the Wife or I accidentally leave one of our phones on the coffee table (for 2 nanoseconds) Grace will get a hold of it and is in heaven. Until we take it away. Then the flood gates open. Not much phases this little girl, but take a real cell phone away from her, and it's like you told a 5-year-old that Santa isn't real.

Anymore we practically have to leave the room if one of us adults wants to make a phone call without her asking to "Talk GiGi. Talk Bop Bop." Over and over again.


Yesterday, we gave in. The Wife was talking to her mother (GiGi to the kids), and Grace wanted to say hello. So, the Wife handed her the phone, and off she went on a nonstop gibberish conversation about who knows what. She may have recounted our entire Thanksgiving weekend, or relayed the latest gossip from the church nursery. She was ecstatic to have someone on the other end of the phone. Cute. But like a teenage girl talking to a boy, when we told her it was time to hang up, she got upset and drug the goodbyes out for at least another three minutes.

"Vuv oohh. Buh-bye ... Hi Gigi. Howyoudoingt'day? Vuv oohh. Buh-bye ... Hi GiGi!"


Maybe I shouldn't be so worried now. Yes, she may be displaying signs of being a teenager, but thank God, she isn't actually one yet. The conversations are harmless, they're with people we love, and we're right there.

I should probably save my worrying when she's 15 and "Biff" calls.