We love buying things, but when you have little ones you worry about buying nice new things because they tend to break them. Why is it that even though we know there is the possibility of our stuff being broken by our little ones we keep buying it?
Today I am sharing with you stories that we as parents have either been through already, or are completely dreading to experience. These are from friends that shared their stories with me and one is a recent incident we went through at my own house. Check them out.
Just Wanted to Relax in the Tub
My dad, despite his septuagenarian status, was an iPad first adopter in 2010. When I saw his latest piece of Apple technology, I did a little appropriate oohing and ahhing, and my husband interpreted that as “Kim wants one too.” So without my knowledge (or permission—no, no!), he spent hundreds of dollars to get one “for me” (I don’t think I ever did work up the nerve to ask how much he actually spent on it).
The joke was, I never used it; I didn’t really know how to use it. I had an iPhone that I was still trying to wrap my mind around and was not ready for the world of tablets. So it was mostly him and our 4-year-old son who used it. And really mostly our 4-year-old. Ami loved watching movies on it—and that was when I first discovered the wonderful world of “keeping your toddler entertained.”
One day, without our knowledge, Ami decided he wanted to watch movies in the bathtub. I still don’t know how he got it in there; I fixed the tub for him, put him in it, and the next thing I knew, Sione was yelling about how Ami had dropped the iPad in the tub. What?! Our (gulp)-hundred dollar iPad? I immediately did what every parent of a toddler with technology has done at some point: put it in a container full of rice.
We left it there for several days, but it never did recover. Our $800 (?) iPad was now an $800 (?) iBrick. All because our 4-year-old wanted to watch movies in the tub (and, really, who could blame him? That’s the dream, right?). Needless to say, we never invested in another iPad. Until this past year when I got one free with our new phone service. I don’t let the kids touch it, though. They get the much-less-expensive Kindle. And Sione gets the iPad. Because let’s be honest—I still don’t know how to use it.
I Just Wanted to Wash My Cars
My third child is an extremely inquisitive, curious and active child. When he was 4 years old he was playing with cars in our upstairs bathroom. He was giving them a “car wash” in the sink. I was busy putting laundry away and was checking on him often.
I realized all of a sudden that we had swimming lessons and I began rushing to get the kids ready. What I didn’t realize before we left is that Garrett had plugged the sink and turned on the water full force because he wanted to see what would happen.
We came home from swimming lessons an hour later to water pouring from the vents from the upstairs. I ran upstairs and there was water gushing everywhere. Our carpet down the hall from the bathroom was soaked, our drywall was bubbling, our linoleum in our bathroom was ruined, it was a disaster!
It was too much for us to clean up ourselves so we called a restoration company. Fortunately our homeowner’s insurance paid for this except our deductible. The restoration company brought huge fans to help dry the carpet and drywall.
The fans generated so much heat that not only was it noisy and windy in our house (did I mention we lived in Las Vegas and this was July…105+ degrees) our air conditioning unit was working too hard and gave up the ghost.
Unfortunately our homeowner’s insurance did not cover the A/C unit and we had to pay for that out of pocket because living without A/C in July in Vegas just isn’t an option.
This was most definitely our most expensive “replacement” our children have created. Previous to this they had cracked an iPad screen, drawn with sharpie on my couch and carpet and ruined clothing among other things.
However nothing compared to having our house torn up to replace drywall, carpet, subfloor, tile and an air conditioning unit.
Drive In Disaster
My wife was in high school and decided to go to a drive in with some friends. Her grandpa had a truck and he loved sharing it with everyone. She had asked to borrow the truck to take to the drive in, we might add that this truck was super cool, red and at least for the grandkids it was pretty much the bomb.com. So she took one friend and a whole bunch of blankets and headed to the drive in.
They watched the first movie and left before the next one started. This was way back when there were posts for you to tune your radio to. Well as they were pulling out to head home she heard a crunch and one of those darn posts had found it’s way into the passenger door. She was devastated, humiliated, but mostly nervous to tell her grandpa what she had done.
The next day she returned the truck and told her grandpa through sobs what she had done. He looked at her with a big grin and asked if she was ok. She made a confused face and answered him back that yes, everyone was safe. Then he said that people are more important than cars or anything else that he owned. He gave her a big hug and calmed her nerves but taught her a very important life lesson. His reaction or lack of reaction was something that taught her a great life lesson. Not only are people more important than things but he talked to her in a way that made her believe it.
Is the Power Out?
With summer months firmly upon us, our area of town has a tendency to get small power outages frequently. We hadn’t thought anything of them, especially when it comes to our new iMac.
One day last week I was working on the computer getting bills taken care of, working on emails and of course lots to do for the blog. I was typing a email when suddenly it seemed like the power had gone off.
Quickly I learned that it wasn’t a power outage, but my son was under my desk turning off the power strip. I quickly thought, this shouldn’t be an issue. I turned the power strip back on and turned on the iMac. The status bar was filling up when suddenly, boom! It shut down again.
I tried over and over again trying to get it to turn on, but it wasn’t working. I took a few really deep breaths and asked my wife to take the kids into the other room. I didn’t want to say anything hurtful to my son or wife. I remained quite calm for the first 45 min but it took a while for anything to look positive.
If you know me, you know that I am the worst when it comes to fixing anything, so I quickly jumped on the phone with Apple care to see what they could do for me. After an hour on the phone with Apple, who was very patient and helpful, it came to the determination that the software had been corrupted and I needed to set the computer back to it’s original settings. I lost everything!
Thankfully I had images on the cloud, but so much was lost it made for a very frustrating weekend and trying to get things done on the new computer. On the bright side we still have our iMac minus several programs and documents but we do still have a working computer.
Love, No Matter What
At the end of the day, I realize yes we all lost some great things, but no matter what we will still love our kids. It’s stories like these that keep life interesting, but it’s important that we keep cool and not stress because all these things can be replaced, but there isn’t a need to be upset and yell because those moments will be in your kid’s minds the rest of their lives.
Just think, now you’ll have to buy all new stuff, restart and clean up everything you thought you couldn’t live without.
