Parental preferences

There is much debate with parents about modern day gadgetry and how old a kid needs to be to own certain things. Last Christmas I asked if y'all thought my kid (age 8) was old enough to appreciate an iPod Nano. We decided to get one for her, it was also the Christmas she found out the Truth about Santa. She was thrilled with the The Truth BTW, she now gets to be Santa and it delights her so. Really, she always exceeds my expectations in departments like these, I had no idea she'd take it so darn well. The Nano was a great hit. She sometimes uses it for music but mostly she makes documentaries. They are so damn cute, especially when she puts her face in front of it while holding it, all you see is from her nostrils up to her forehead. Hilarious moments to be sure. She was totally old enough to appreciate this complicated gadget, I don't know why I question these things anymore.

This year is a whole new level though that I am uneasy about. Every summer she goes back to San Diego and stays with my mother in law and goes to a bazillion different summer camps. It's awesome in one way because there's no way we could afford all of these camps (mother in law pays for them) and child care costs over the summer would kill us. Really, kids are stupid expensive. The down side is we don't see her for 3 months. She, of course, is so busy busy busy that she barely notices our absence which is as it should be right? This year is going to be a huge step though. Previously someone would accompany her on the flight out there. This year she's doing it solo. Am I uncomfortable about this? YES. But my hubby and my mother in law think its fine so really, what I think is irrelevant. Yes, I'm going to catch shit about that statement from the hubby but I'm not really into lying to y'all and he hasn't noticed I've been posting again anyway.

The bribe to get her on the plane by herself was a cell phone. She goes on like a big girl then she can have a cell phone. No, we did not get her an iPhone. There was a lot of research done by the hubby on line to see what kind of phones would work best for young kids. There seems to be a helluva lot of young ones out there will cell phones. Yes, we did take into consideration the maturity of our child (not just other kids her age, but our child by herself) and whether or not she was old enough to handle that kind of responsibility. There really is no doubt in my mind that she can handle it.

Then choosing of said phone was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. We had been looking at the pay by minute phones, we wanted to minimize monetary parts of this and that seemed like the logical choice. Today we were shopping next door to an AT&T store (our carrier) and I suggested we stop in and see how much adding a line onto our plan would cost. If it was less than the pay by minute ones then I wanted to know. It was. Not only that but family mobile to mobile is free and we have unlimited texting. The hubby and I never use the phone minutes, we have like the least amount of minute plan but text all you want. We also have over 4000 minutes in our cache of minutes. I'll be surprised if the kid even puts a dent in it. One of the biggies that I liked about us getting her on our plan with this phone (the LG Neon, internet connection disabled) was that it had a QWERTY keyboard on it. If we can get her to text we can get her to read and write more. The sales guy was all kinds of impressed with this selling ploy, apparently he'd never heard of that 'bonus' yet. There are lots of parents buying young kids phones, I'll bet he'll be pulling that one out of his bag a lot.

So she now has her own cell phone. And we're just trying to start having a second kid. Age gap much? Dude, she has her own cell phone, we're old....