Texting with TG

Toward the middle of last school year, we told The Girl that if she stayed on Principal's Honor Roll (3.5-4.0gpa) the entire year we'd buy her a cell phone. She'd been begging for one forever, but MM and I didn't think she needed the added distraction. Plus, let's be honest, the kid is not the most responsible. But this year..man, she really did a 180. She only got in trouble once for not turning in homework assignments, and that was because she was absent (she then procrastinated about turning them in, but I can't blame her for not doing them initially). She also worked hard and got good grades the entire year. She managed As and Bs on every report card and finished the year with a perfect 4.0. It was amazing.

Once we told her we'd buy her a cell phone if she made Principal's Honor Roll, she did even better. MM and I shopped around and found a good deal on a Samsung Seek. For now we've restricted her to calls and texts only, but we told her she can earn the right to use the web as time goes on. We're waiting to see how she does. Of course, because I'm the Wicked Mom of the West Coast, she has rules. She's not allowed to text with people we don't know (ie strangers). Her phone really belongs to me, so at any given time I can take it and read her texts/listen to her messages. She's not allowed to delete anything without my permission. She has to plug it in in the living room at night (no taking it to bed with her). Etc, etc.

I expected her to fight me on some if it, but she's been really great about it. Since her and her friends are all pretty young still, I haven't seen anything too crazy in her texts. Plus, we have the added bonus of being able to see where she is all time since we enabled the GPS without telling her. We're mean like that.

About 2 weeks after we gave her the phone I was messing around and checked our text usage. MM had about 450 texts, I had about 700 and TG? Well, she had almost 4000. FOUR FREAKING THOUSAND TEXTS. IN A TWO WEEK PERIOD.

I didn't even know it was possible to send that many texts. Cripes. Lucky for us we saw that coming and had unlimited. She would have been dead otherwise.

Now that she's had it a little while the newness has worn off and she isn't texting as much. She cracks me up with what she does text about. She's so shiny, her texts are often random and silly. Here, let me give you an example.

The other day I was trying to clean the house and couldn't find my cleaning spray. Since TG was the last one I saw with it I texted to ask if she knew where it was (she's with her dad).

Me: Do you know where my bottle of bleach cleaner is?
TG: I hid it in my evil penguin lair. You'll never find it now! Muahaha!
Me: Jerk. Srsly, where is it?
TG: idk
Me: Brat.
TG: I don't! I was only half joking about the penguins! They aren't evil! And they didn't steal ur bleach!
Me: Lies!
TG: haha ... Maybe.


Her evil penguin lair? This kid...