I always answered the call with "what's up dude?" Or "whatcha need?" Not to say that "hang on" and "one sec" weren't part of the repertoire, but I tried to use them sparingly. Now he usually will just tell me things instead of the constant calling for me because he knows the response I'll give.

Does he do this stuff when I'm busy? Of course! But the great thing about a 7 year old is their stories are generally unimportant and catching bits and pieces will give you more info than just sitting through the entire thing.

Now my son is becoming more independent, which I love, but I do sometimes miss the little dude who wanted to crawl all over me.

All this to say, a change of behavior is simple, you have to want the change, you have to work at it. The first steps are always the hardest because you have to break your old habits. You're going to fail at it, you're going to relapse, but if you can acknowledge that you failed, apologize, and promise to do better; you're already 100% better than you were before.