Please Hang Up and Try Again

Tell me what it is about receiving a phone call that makes kids go ape sh*t. Seriously. We can be having a totally calm and peaceful day and the second the phone rings kids are screaming, crying, fighting, yelling. It's like Armageddon.

Because of our recent hospital fiasco I have been fielding an unusually high amount of phone calls lately. They are relatively important phone calls in the sense that I would like to be able to explain my concerns and have the person on the other end hear me. Likewise I'd like to be able to hear what he/she has to say in response without having to constantly say, "I'm sorry, can you please repeat that. I have kids screaming in the background."

Then today I received a phone call from an instructor at a dance camp I am enrolling my daughter in for next week. I was trying to get some of the new information since it had changed. My son chooses that moment to have a meltdown of mythical proportions. Over what I don't know. However, he is screaming bloody murder and following me from room to room. When I get close enough to try to pick him up, basically to shut him up, he cries even louder so that I have to put him down and hide in my husband's closet to finish the phone call. I'm sure the young lady on the other end was thinking, "Man, I hope that's not the kid they are bringing to camp next week."

While my daughter, for the most part, seems to grasp the concept of "Mommy's on the phone, no one talks" pretty well, my son does not and half the time having my daughter saying, not so quietly, "Shhh, mommy is on the phone. We have to be quiet" is just as loud as the breakdown my son is having. So, apparently I am either going to lose my mind or I just can never talk on the phone again.