Taking sides at a young age

Given my iPhone 5S is nearing its 2 year contract, I can get an upgrade to the 6 or 7 or whatever comes by November. 

Jr. already has got her own 5S and her iPhone 4S is now a hand me down to the little one. I have since been getting an earfull on how the 4S is useless! It has no memory. It has a poor battery life and keeps losing charge. It is slow and there is a long list of complaints. 

Also the little one is hoping that I get the new phone and she automatically gets my current phone as a hand me down... with a phone number. She now has a busy calendar and friends to call on play dates.. which will soon be called "hangouts"

Another thing I learned is that when a girl goes from elementary school to middle school and does the same thing with the same friends in the same houses, it still goes by a different name. It is not a Playdate anymore. It is a "hangout". 

Life was simpler when I was a kid. Same cricket bat, same electric box used as stumps, same bunch of boys.. same rules for what gets called a 4,6 or out. None of this playdate vs. hangout stuff. We didn't even have a name for when we all got together and played cricket or table tennis or went to the beach on our bicycles.

Given all the playdates and possible future hangouts, the little one made us wander to the phone section in target to "check out" the phone deals. Of course she points to a 5S and goes "it is 40$ per month ONLY appa!" 

If ONLY she knew what that ONLY meant for a two year contract! That is when San takes her to the wall and goes "why dont you pick one of these phones. they are larger, have more memory and come with cheaper plans"

The little one wanders through the display and comes back to us and goes 

"that wall is ENTIRELY full of Android crap!" 

I burst out laughing but looked the other way.

Jr. and San were shocked by the way she said it with all that frustration.

Given San uses a Xiaomi Android phone, not sure how she took it.

Looks like we have an "i-ddict" in the house. They got this one young.. 

Now we wait for November. 

You want the truth?

Was driving the kids back after we went to get some frozen yogurt and the radio was on.

An ad started with something along the lines of  "Walgreens would like to ask you a question. if you have to go buy groceries, but just a few groceries and you have to shop for other things, where would you go?"

Both the girls in the back seat were seriously digging into the yogurt and subconsciously they say "Target"

I started laughing out loud.

They asked me why I was laughing and I said "did you guys even listen to that? it was an Ad. For Walgreens! It started with Walgreens would like to ask.. "

Pat comes the reply from Jr. 

"hey, if you don't like to hear the answer to the question, don't ask it!" 

Walgreens has some soul searching to do. 

Responsibility 101

Jr. went to Great America for a day to perform as part of her school band. They were done by 11AM and the rest of the day was play time till the school bus dropped them back at 7:30 PM. She "termited" us (kept pressuring us till we gave in) to pay 60 dollars for this outing! 

Around noon, something falls into her eye. She tries cleaning it with water and no luck. Given a choice between calling us ASAP and telling us she has something in her eye, or continuing to go on rides with her classmates and attempting 6 more washing eye routines all with no success, she choose the latter. 

To top things off, she develops light sensitivity and to solve that problem, buys herself a dark 5$ sunglass of poor quality that makes it worse if anything. When she stepped down from that school bus all teary eyed and in dark sunglasses, our first thought was "did someone abuse our daughter?". Once we got the full story and saw how bad her eye was, we knew how the rest of the evening was going to go..

Spent the rest of our evening in ER, mostly waiting. Finally when our turn came, they put a numbing drops into her eye, put a dye in there, looked at it under a powerful scope, found the thing under her eyelid and pulled it out. By the time though, the damage was done and the white of her eye was bloodied. 

So we came home with antibiotic ointments and a moping Jr. 

This morning I was talking to my mother on the phone and told her about the experience while Jr. was listening in. Then I mentioned that "if she had called us as soon as it happened we could have solved this earlier, with a lot less drama and for 20$ copay instead of 250$ emergency visit". 

Jr. was upset over this. She tells me "it is my eyes we are talking about! you are upset over 250$ vs. 20$?"

That kind of pushed me over the edge because I don't think she understands how difficult it is to make 250$ vs. 20$.  The fact that she is my number one concern doesn't change. The fact that I bring this up is to worry about a daughter who doesn't undertand the value of money. 

Then she came up with "it is not like you didn't have accidents when you were my age! Paati(grandma) told me all the stories about how you got hurt so many times doing stupid things!".. I muttered something to the effect of "good that she doesn't have a FB account or I will not be able to have any conversation with my kids"

True. True. Very true. I almost ruined our Poonal ceremony by falling off a parapet wall and getting stitches on the back of my head and that is just at the top of a long list of things. To my credit, I promptly told my parents or grand parents or any nearby relative of my stupidity, so they could take timely action!

It is not easy to have Responsibility 101 conversations with kids, given they know everything already! Wonder why a kid smart enough to argue with me on technicalities is not making the right choice when it concerns her own eye?!

The good news is that she is doing fine now and her eyes have cleared out. Good enough to go to school tomorrow. I am also happy  that this happened while I was in town or it would have been very difficult for San to handle on her own!

For my part, I did apologize to Jr. if I sounded like the money was more important than her eyes. For her part, she has promised to be more responsible and call us ASAP when it comes to any medical emergencies! 

Lets see how the promises go..