If this were a real emergency...

William plays with the phone a lot. He crawls over to the side of the bed in our room where the phone used to be on the corner shelf. It's on the floor now, because that's where it inevitably ends up every day. He loves to pull on the cords--oh, how he loves cords, of all kinds. He likes to chew on them and tug at them, and wave his arms frantically while holding onto them and squealing with joy.

He also likes to press the buttons. That was one of his first controlled actions with his hands. He holds onto the side of the phone and presses downward with one of his fingers or thumb. Sometimes he leaves the phone off the hook and crawls away. He hasn't learned to put it back yet, so I have to do it for him. Our cordless phone battery has suffered grieviously since William started excercising his button-pushing fingers. *Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep* I once found it lying on the floor with the readout showing it had been off the hook well over 90 minutes. That little green LCD screen seemed to be crying out, "Put me back on the charging station, please!"

Today, William learned how to dial the telephone. I was lying on the bed watching him play with the phone on the floor, and he seemed to be finished, so I hung up the reciever. A few seconds later, the phone rang again, so I picked it up:

"Hello?"

"This is the Provo Police Department. We just received a 911 call from this phone number, is everything okay?"

"Oh. Yeah, that must have been my son," I said with a smile toward William. He didn't care at all; didn't even look up. He just kept playing. Typical.

The nice woman on the other end then verified our address, thanked me, and hung up.

"Thanks," I said, thinking she probably gets a lot of those calls in our town.