The Grandma In the Phone

There are times when we all wish we could read a baby’s mind – especially when they’re crying and nothing you can do will comfort them. Are they in pain? Are they bored? Hungry, wet, or just not feeling well? Or when they’re staring off into space, fascinated by something you can’t see and you wish you could ask them what they’re looking at—because all you see is a door or wall. And those moments when they just look kind of sad and kind of thoughtful and you’d love to know what put that expression on their face.

And then you have Aria and me….

Big girl 9-8Look how much she’s grown in four months!

Since getting my handy dandy combination camera/microphone, we’ve been doing video chats for a couple of months now. My daughter ‘calls’ me, or I ‘call’ her and Aria and I can see and hear each other in real time. The thing is, I use my PC and she uses her cell phone. Her phone is a lot smaller than my monitor, so I expect my face looks like it’s about the size of a deck of cards to Aria.

She will usually smile at me for maybe a full minute. After that, I have to work hard for maybe one or two more over the next half hour or more (she gets bored fast). So then I’m sliding the chat screen far to the left of my screen, making the browser window narrow enough so they fit side-by-side—and turning the camera around so she can watch the Winnie the Pooh theme song while I watch her watching it. She does like other videos, but that seems to be her favorite.

Oh the lengths I’m willing to go in order to participate—in some way—in her life when I can’t be there.

When we’re not chatting, my daughter says the baby often looks at her phone. She thinks Aria is waiting for my face to appear. I’d sure like to think so…

One of the most fun things about all of this though is seeing that baby’s face when I get over there for a visit—usually bi-weekly since the camera arrived. Her expression when I walk in is priceless. It’s kind of like how did you get out of the phone?! And it’s equally as good when I get back home and we’re doing the video chats again. How do you DO that?! Those are the times I really wish I could know what was going on in her head.

I really love that these chats make the wait between visits more tolerable. I’ve stopped fighting tears for the first half hour of the drive home because I know that in just a couple of hours, there will be another video chat. Still, bi-weekly visits aren’t enough and I’m seriously considering bumping the visits up to once every ten days—or even weekly before too much longer.

Yeah. I like my daughter and granddaughter just a little bit.

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2 Responses to The Grandma In the Phone

  1. First of all, I LOVE what you did to your site! It’s awesome!!

    Second, I would love to know if she’s wondering how you can get into the phone and out so easily, too. LOL Babies are amazing.

    • Kristy K. James says:

      Thanks, Ruth! I love it too. I was thrilled when I finally got to see it. 🙂

      And yeah, they sure are. I just love her expression when I go for a visit. At least she knows me well enough from the video chats to recognize that the ‘in person’ me is the same one she expects to see on the phone screen. 😀

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