Operator, I'd like to place a call

One of my coworkers has a son who is the same age as Miranda. After a few amusing incidents (like the one where I called my coworker's house and his son gave me his work number, or the time that his son decided to see what would happen if he dialed 911 while his mother was in the shower) it occurred to me that Miranda probably ought to be comfortable using the phone in case there was a real emergency.

With this thought in mind, we started having Miranda call me at work when she got up in the morning. For awhile, this seemed to be going really well, and it didn't take long before she had that number memorized. Then, one Monday morning when I got to work, I saw that I had two messages in my voicemail. I dialed up; the first message was random noise, and I thought, "Hmm, that call sounds like it was placed from my kitchen, but who would have called me from my house over the weekend?" The second message had the same background noise, but this time a little voice said, "I want my Mommy." Of course, I had gone out with friends on Saturday night, and Miranda had been home with the babysitter (which she had been really psyched about, but there must be something about bedtime ...)

Now it occurred to me what the shortcoming was of having her call me at work: if she had an emergency and tried to call me there when I wasn't at work, then she wouldn't reach me. So now the new plan was that she would start calling me on my cell phone.

The problem with this? This is my *emergency* phone, so we pay by the (prepaid) minute. Believe it or not, five-year-old girls can find a lot to talk about, so suddenly I saw my minutes plummeting. To bypass this problem, when she calls me on my cell phone in the morning, she doesn't say hello or anything else, but quickly says, "Mommy, call me back!" and hangs up.

She always sounds so happy when she calls me in the morning.