At any given time

At any given time, my car contains 2 iPhones, an old iPod and a new iPod Touch. If all of those gadgets are in the car, then it’s likely to also be carrying a MacBook Pro. Plus at least 4 empty juice boxes.

We spend a lot of time in our car.

(Strike that. *I* spend a lot of time in our car. Preschool drop-offs 3 days a week, pick-ups 5 days a week and train station runs twice a day, 3 days a week. And then there’s the everyday errands, and the not-so-everyday errands, like my 36-mile round trip to pick up 40 teacups and saucers for a Girl Scout event. Oy.)

And lately, to keep Abby happy when she’s in the car, we’ve started giving her more stuff to play with. The old iPod used to be Brian’s but is currently loaded with the “Abby Mix” and plays on random all. The. Time. Except when it plays the Princess and the Frog soundtrack on repeat, which seems like ALWAYS.

The iPod Touch is full of cute games and apps we had originally downloaded on our iPhones to keep Abby busy in grocery store lines and the like. But it was killing our batteries. And frankly, I had birds to fling myself and couldn’t always be giving up my phone to the three-year-old.

We only gave Abby the iPod Touch (which she calls her iPhone) a week ago. And I’m already regretting that decision. She picks it up the second she gets in the car and has it surgically attached to her hands for the whole ride to school or home or the train station or whatever. We don’t talk to each other, don’t sing along to the Abby Mix, nothing. She lives in her little backseat world and I drive the car. That’s it. I know it’s a problem because she’s stopped objecting to me putting the radio on a real, grown-up station. We’re in trouble here.

So, this morning the iPod Touch got “lost”. Mommy and Daddy just couldn’t find it. So Daddy and Abby listened to the Princess and the Frog soundtrack (thanks, Daddy for taking one for the team!) and actually talked on the way to school. And for pickup, she requested that I bring not-my-dog, Simpson. Maybe she’s planning on talking to him, too.