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Call of the Wild

Baby Correspondence, Video - Posted by SFDad on October 13, 2009 at 6:55 am

Showing off her “mad iPhone skillz”

I remember it well. It was a few weeks ago, on September 23rd, that SFBaby first called me. On “her” iPhone.

We have, unfortunately, gotten into the habit of handing the iPhone to SFBaby when we need a free hand or two. Although the iPhone is somewhat of a mindless babysitter replacement, at least giving her the iPhone is better than having her watch television (or so we tell ourselves) because the iPhone is interactive and it engages her brain. Or something like that. In any event, the iPhone is definitely crack for toddlers and SFBaby loves it.

So, I was walking back from a dental appointment, and I heard my phone ring. It was SFMom calling! I opened my phone (note that SFDad is not lucky enough to own an iPhone), but the only words I heard were: “Uh oh.” That was the point when I realized that my daughter was calling me.

Later that day, while we were playing on the floor of her room, SFBaby let out an unsolicited “Hihowareyou?” to demonstrate that she really was paying attention to phone manners. SFDad’s jaw dropped. She probably thinks it’s just two words, but still.

Since then, SFBaby has become even better at using the iPhone. She is able to navigate to most of the apps on the phone, page by page, and get to the app she wants. She also understands that she needs to give the phone to us when she accidentally calls someone.

After a few weeks of her accidentally calling SFMom’s various friends at 6 am (sorry!), we decided that we needed to lock things down. An out-of-the-box iPhone does not have any way to do this, but after jailbreaking SFMom’s phone, we were able to install the “LockDown” application when prevents SFBaby from accessing critical parts of the phone (such as the phone and address book parts of the device).

This worked well for quite a while…but unbeknownst to us, SFBaby found another sneaky way to access the “favorites” list of people to call on the phone, so she was back to her usual trick of making unwanted calls to friends in the wee hours of the morning.

SFDad decided to up the ante in the arms race by replacing the entire first page of SFMom’s favorites list with SFMom’s “access my voicemail” number. This is working for now, but we are afraid that it is only a matter of time before SFBaby learns how to scroll down…

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