Pavlov?

Are you familiar with Pavlov and his experiments? I'm convinced that children are just automatically programmed with his experiments in mind. He is the one who, through repeated experiments, was able to ring a bell to get a dog to salivate.

My children kind of do the same thing, except that, when they hear a phone ring, all hell breaks loose! It works backwards, too. Amazingly, if they hear me TALKING on the phone (as in, I made the phone call), this very same hell breaks loose. Can someone explain this to me? I'm at a complete loss. Or should I just accept now that I should never make or accept a phone call until my kids are off to college?

Let me lay the scene for you. Varying degrees of this very situation happen to me about 15 times per day.....The house is completely quiet. Madison is at the table drawing pictures, completely content for the past 20+ minutes. Nathan is playing quietly in the playroom with some specific toy that has captured him. I think to myself that they have full bellies, they are busy as little bees, and no one has spoken a word to me in ages. Great. Perfect time to make a much needed phone call, right? Wrong. As soon as my voice starts talking, Nathan drops what he is doing and runs halfway across the house screaming, "My turn! My turn!" reaching and climbing up my legs to take the phone from me. At the same time, Madison is bringing me 12 pictures to show, in great detail, what each picture is and who it is for, and can she have an envelope to send this one to one friend, and another envelope for another friend, and can she have a stapler to put together the book she made, and is it time for snack yet and can she pleeeeease call a friend because she is SO bored. The motions I make with my finger signaling them to be quiet and to just give me a second only fuels the fire. Nathan screams louder, Madison pouts and stomps her foot because I dared to shush her. I am able to give Madison a look of death, of which she understands she had better wait her turn or she won't be getting what she wants. Nathan, on the other hand, is incapable of comprehending these looks just yet. With him I have to threaten to put MYSELF in the laundry room in order to finish my phone call, which either quiets him immediately, or freaks him out even more, in which case I retreat to the laundry room while he bangs and screams bloody murder two inches away from me and my phone call. It is at this point that I must tell my caller that I have to call them back later and I hang up the phone with complete and utter frustration. Why?? It happens every.single.time.

I know my kids are not the only ones who do this as Madison's friends do the exact same thing to me when they are over here. But really, it's driving me to the point of insanity.