Goodbye YouTube

Grace loves to play with my phone. If you're one of the zillions of people out there who have both phones and small children, I'm sure you can relate. I don't know anything about Android phones, but I do know that on an iPhone, the YouTube icon is kinda scary when you've got a little kid.

Now, Grace isn't normally left alone with my phone, but sometimes the little sneak makes off with it while I'm cooking, still asleep in the morning, whatever. I'm not perfect. It happens. I'm sure you've been there. The only thing that really worries me about her being unsupervised with my phone is YouTube. She loves it. A small child cruising YouTube on her own? Horrifying, I know. Who knows what she may run into on there??? 

Until today I didn't know you could block it. I thought it was impossible. I found out how on a stroke of pure genius total dumb luck and thought I'd share it. I've talked to other people who didn't know about this either and have had the same concerns, so I'm guessing there are others out there like us.

Before, I looked (several times) in the settings and totally failed to look in the right place. Since YouTube is one of the built-in apps that can't be deleted, that wasn't an option. But I like using it sometimes so I didn't want to do that anyway. So then I tried hiding it in a folder on the verrrrry last page, and she still found it. I didn't know what else to do but try extra hard to keep an eye on my phone. But like I said, she's sneaky. And I'm the human kind of mother. 

So for anyone else who hasn't been able to figure this out, here's how to do it. First, open up your Settings, then go to General. Then scroll down to Restrictions and tap on it. 

That will lead you to this page. Tap on Enable Restrictions. 

Then you'll be told to set a passcode. 

Then, slide the YouTube switch to off, and that's it! No more having to worry about little eyes seeing things they shouldn't! Well, on YouTube anyway. But that's something, right? Now it's completely invisible and can't be used anymore unless you enter in the passcode. (To enable it again, just follow the same steps and then flip the switch over to on.) OH YEAH!!!! While I was at it, I went ahead and turned off Deleting Apps too. That kid has deleted a lot of apps by tapping on the pretty wiggling x. 

YouTube can still be used with Safari, but she's four. She doesn't know how to use a browser. I'll worry about that when she can spell more than five words. I'm glad I figured this out, but dude. There's going to be one ticked off little girl in this house when she discovers that her beloved YouTube icon is nowhere to be found. Oh well. A little peace of mind will be worth it. 

Friend on the floor

This is Audrey. She was Grace's best preschool friend who recently moved to Japan. And for one day, she lived on our bathroom floor.

Despite what her shirt says, Audrey isn't much of a talker.

You may find it strange that we allowed an imaginary person to lay around our bathroom all day. You may even say we were crazy for carefully sidestepping around a laid out pair of clothes to avoid messing them up. But as many know, parenthood can make you do some pretty weird stuff.

You also need to understand something about Audrey. Grace ADORED her. They were such good little friends. Grace talked about her all the time, but I only ever actually saw them together before school started. This is how it went most every morning before preschool:

Audrey: Hi Grace!! Do you like my new shoes??? They have Hello Kitty on them!
Grace: Yeah!! And do you like my shirt???? It's got sparkles on it!"
Audrey: Yeah it's pretty!!

Then they'd giggle about whatever else little girls giggle about until it was time to go into their classroom. I always pictured them going shopping together when they were in high school and comparing clothes just like they did back in preschool. But then Audrey moved to Japan so I'm pretty sure that dream is dead.

After Audrey's last day at school, it took Grace a week or so to fully realize that she wasn't coming back. And then there were a lot of questions about Japan, and a lot of "I miss my friend Audrey" comments. And then one day Audrey was lying in the middle of the bathroom floor.

This is the part where you see why Dustin and I took great care to not crumple up an outfit worn by an invisible child. When Grace showed it to me, I gave her props for her good imagination and then told her we needed to pick up the clothes and put them away. But then her eyes got all big and sad, and she begged and pleaded with me to not move her friend Audrey. Ever. Because she missed her and didn't want her to go. She begged until she almost cried.

So now seriously, who would pick up the clothes after that? Only someone who hates kittens and feeling joy, that's who. We figured that this was just her way of dealing with the loss of her friend and to just let it run its course, so the clothes stayed put. She never talked to Floor Audrey or anything. She just wanted her around. For the rest of the day, we made sure to step around the little outfit very carefully, so as not to mess it up. Because Grace the Perfectionist would notice if it moved even a little.

Let me tell you something. Brushing your teeth is no easy feat when you have to stand like a figure skater to reach the sink.

"Maybe if I can stretch just a little more, I can reach the toothpaste without breaking my face."

Sometime in the middle of the night, someone went into the bathroom half awake and messed Audrey up. In the morning no one knew who was to blame, but Grace wasn't real happy about it. She hobbled into our room with her hair sticking straight out, looked at us like we were scum and said, "Who messed up my friend Audrey?!?!...It's okay. I'll fix her."

But then she never did, and that was the end of Floor Audrey until a few days ago when she made another appearance.

This time, Grace only made half of her body before moving on to other things. I'll take this as progress.