What's Your Digits?

During a casual conversation at school with her fellow kindergartners, Salem wrote down her contact information and passed it out among the children in class. Later that day, her father started fielding calls from 5-year-olds while at the office.

Admittedly I was a little jealous that she didn't think to give out my number. But that thought quickly ended when I visualized what it must have been like for her dad to negotiate those calls.

Another thing to consider; how are these calls being placed? The mother hands her cell phone over to her kid allowing her to catch up with friends? Maybe the sneaky kid made use of the dusty old land line in guest room. Either way, it's a mystery.

Dear iphone, Thank you for enabling password functionality.

That Gal

her: "Hey mom?"
me: "Yeah babe, what's up?"
her: "There's a gal in my class that has the same necklace as me."
(she started to quietly chuckle to herself)
me: "What's so funny?"
her: "heh, 'gal' - I got that word from you...that's a funny way to say 'girl'. You say 'gal', now I say 'gal'.
me: "Yeah, I don't know why I say that. Sometimes I think it makes me sound old or something."
her: "Well, if we both say it, people will know that we're part of the same family!"

The adorable logic of a 5-year-old: The family-wide use of the term 'gal' indicates heredity. Much like the genetic traits of straight hair, eye color or freckles indicate a family line.

Food Gods - Hear My Prayers

The kid hardly eats. Gentle Food Gods, please help her find her path. It would make us all happy.

These are the only items she'll eat without being held at gunpoint:

1. Cookies and or cookie dough ice cream
   
2. Fruity Pebbles (sometimes)
3. Icing licked off of a cake
4. Marshmallows: Only the small kind and only if they are straight out of the bag
5. Shrimp Chips
6. 3 or 4 bites of macaroni and cheese
7. Tiny bits of paper napkins or Kleenex while watching iCarly
8. Vietnamese crab cakes - They have recently been the cause of food poisoning (shock)... so they're off the list.
9. 3 or 4 bites of pizza.
10. 3 or 4 bites of Ramen noodles
    

Password Journal

Dear Password Journal Creators,

I wanted to take a moment to indicate just how much your product has taken over our lives. Since Santa dropped off the Girl Tech Password Journal, my daughter has become paranoid and obsessively protective over said item.

Here's how your product has interfered with our day-to-day activities:

1. Creating a password: Like its very name states, this journal requires a spoken password in order to reveal its top-secret contents. Keep in mind the password your daughter creates must be repeated in the exact voice volume and inflection that it was recorded in. The Journal uses a voice prompt that is just like the one in Space Balls the Movie where they require "Hand Print Identification" in order to open the security doors in the mothership. This thing is SERIOUS. You cannot open this bear trap unless you use the SAME voice with the same background noises you recorded while creating your password in the first place. With that said, never record your password while whispering, slightly laughing, after dental surgery, in front of the TV, or next to a bird cage unless you want to set up that very scene with the bird chirping in the background every time to try to open this journal. Impossible.

2.Remembering your password: The whole point here is to keep top-secret 5-year-old journal entries safe from the prying eyes of others. If your child forgets her password this initiates the painful process of fighting with the British-accented recorded voice prompts "Please state your password...That's an incorrect password. Please state your password..." while maintaining your cool as to not smash the stupid thing open - because the LAST thing you want is your daughter crying over this stubborn toy.

3. Once inside the Journal: There is a special pen that may be used, the ink fades away on the paper and becomes invisible once dry. The journal entries may be revealed by a tiny black light located at the top of the journal. Please note, there is only ONE WAY to stow the pen within the journal case while not in use. If you place the pen in the case incorrectly (this includes having the cap face the wrong direction) and close the journal case, you're screwed. When you return to open the journal, the pen will jam the cover keeping it tightly shut. After you've gone through the trouble of setting up your background noises, using your "password voice" while standing on one leg - for a half an hour, realize it's the PEN causing the obstruction and you must perform surgery on the product to open it. All the while you have a very upset child chanting in the background "Open it please, open it! I want to write in my journal....Did you break it? Did you? What's wrong? I wanna write in my journal!"

4. Contents: May I be so bold as to say a 5 year old's journal entries are not something of national security. Why is this thing so difficult to work with? Why is my child so obsessed with it? Admittedly this is terrible, but one night, after she'd gone to bed, she left the journal open on the couch. My friend Alison was over and she and I decided to thumb through the journal with the black light on, revealing Salem's entries. I'm not sure what I expected, but what I found was not as revealing as I anticipated. The first entry she had drawn a heart on the page. The second entry, she spelled out her's and her best friend's names and decorated them in a ring of hearts. The third entry was a hapless number 5 centered on the page. The subsequent pages were a combination of the first three. Upon closing the journal, I thought to myself, "Gee, I'm so glad I jump through all these hoops on a daily basis trying to pry this stupid thing open for her. These secrets must never get in the wrong hands, thank the lord for the security of this journal!"