The Journey of One Little Phone

Pictures!! Sometimes I don't even realize how many pictures I take. Today I finally sat down and took all the pics off my camera and iPhone and tossed them on to the external hard drive for safe keeping. How many pictures would that be? I'm not exactly sure, but I do know that I had just under 1,100 pics and videos on my phone alone. Whoa. A good number of them have already been posted in the months since I first started using my iPhone, but not all. I'll work on getting them posted in the week to come. It's going to be a busy week, though, so no cross-my-heart promises. Here's one just to tie us over. (She found Daddy's stethoscope and watch and knew just what to do.)


Speaking of my iPhone, did you hear what happened to it? If not, here you go. So, two weeks ago, Ella and I were upstairs getting ready for the day. Pete was home since it was his week off, and we were all getting things together for a day trip up to Grand Marais. The weather was beyond gorgeous and we were already dreaming of the Sven & Oles Pizza we were going to feast upon for lunch. So yes, Ella and I were getting ready. I was in the bathroom putting my contacts in while Ella walked from her bedroom to the bathroom to our room and back. No worries, she does this all the time and we've made sure there is nothing she can get into that isn't safe. There is even a gate at the top of the stairs. No-hassle make-up time for Mama. My contact started to really irritate my eye, the you-don't-even-think-you-can-open-your-eye-but-you-know-you-have-to-in-order-to-get-the-stinking-thing-out-of-there kind of irritated. This is not normal for me. I messed with the contact and finally had it in place. As I wiped the tears off my cheek, I glanced to the left to see Ella standing next to the toilet. The lid was up. Odd. She doesn't usually do that. And then, to my complete horror, I saw my iPhone sitting at the bottom of the toilet. Without a moment of hesitation, I scooped it out, yelled for Pete, stripped off the case, and tried towel drying it. We searched online for ideas on what to do to get the water out and ended up blowing it out with a can of air from Best Buy and zipping it in a bag filled with rice. (Mind you, the only rice we had was a package from an oriental rice mix I found in the pantry. At least it was colorful.) The poor phone showed no signs of life. All we could do was wait. And wait we did.

It was hard to put the condition of the phone out of my mind. I couldn't figure out how Ella got a hold of it or why she had chosen to use that particular object as her first subject for toilet swimming lessons. What good would the heavy analysis do, anyway? The fact was that it had happened and, as many parents have told me since the event, it will surely happen again with other objects.

I waited and prayed and prayed and prayed some more that my poor little iPhone would come back to life, the same phone I debated getting for so long because I was sure that Ella would do something with it and I would regret ever spending the money on such a thing. When the time came for Pete to get his, though, our contract with AT&T was up, presenting us with a really great price to renew along with new phones. It seemed like an ideal time to get one if I was ever going to get one. I decided to give it a go.

It turned out that I loved having it! I used it constantly, and I don't know what I would have done without having Pete's work calendar so accessible when making family plans. I could do without the constant Facebook and email, but Face Time is enthralling. Pete would call us from work and we could actually see him and he could see us. Ella would laugh and say hi and point and show Daddy what she'd been doing. And I had taken tons of high-quality pictures and videos. Tons! So you can see why I spent so much time praying for my little electronic device - the one I wasn't even sure I wanted to buy in the first place. I had grown quite attached to it.

Then came September 28. My birthday. The day my iPhone turned back on. That's right. It came back to life. I still think that it was Jesus who gave me a pretty sweet birthday present.

Maybe you don't think I should make such a big deal out of a silly electronic that I could obviously get by without just fine. It's true. There is no reason I need to have it. But it's acted as a little line between an incredibly hard-working hunk of a husband and his girlies back home. I get to see him in the middle of a long, difficult shift (for either one of us), even while Ella is asleep in bed and I can't leave the house. I consider it a blessing that we could afford them at all. The residency paid for Pete's and the contract renewal made mine far cheaper than normal. I really didn't think I could stomach spending the money on another one. Thank you, Jesus, for hearing my measly little prayer and answering it in a pretty cool way.

So my iPhone and I are one again. And we have lots of pictures to prove it.