The Not-So-Long-Distance Grandma
My 18-month-old granddaughter lives half of her life in Miami, Florida and the other half in Nassau, Bahamas. While that may be great for her, I hate being so far away. With the use of our iPhones and Facetime, the distance issue becomes so much easier. Ella and I have a Facetime visit every few days - my daughter is so wonderful about keeping me in Ella's life and I so love her for it. Here is how a Facetime visit works.
I answer my Facetime call and on the other end is the face of my beautiful granddaughter! I wave to her and she waves back. I ask her what she has been doing all day and just carry on a conversation with her. Since she doesn't talk a whole lot, she just listens and carries me all over the house! Since my daughter has taught Ella sign language, if I mention something that she knows the sign for, she signs - her favorite being duck! She will take me in her little carnival tent from Ikea and we tell stories and share secrets! Sometimes she lays me on the floor and walks off. My daughter will say, "Ella, you left Gigi over there, go get her!" Ella will grab the phone, give me a big smile, and carry me off somewhere else! When Ella has the phone, I see all kinds of strange things - eyeballs (which is now a vocabulary word), bellies, nostrils, ceiling fans - you know how it goes if you accidently leave your video camera on and walk around.
One of Ella's favorite Gigi things to do is to have me smell her feet and exclaim, "Poooo, tinky, tinky" - holding my nose. For a while, as soon as she saw my face she would hold her nose and say, "Poooo." Ella now puts her foot to the phone for me to smell her feet and make my exclamation of "Poooo, tinky, tinky." If she's sitting in her high chair when the Facetime goes through, she automatically lifts that foot up for me to smell over the phone!
Speaking of high chair, many times my daughter will set the phone up while Ella is eating her dinner. We talk while she eats and she shares her food with me! I take a bite and say, "Nummy, nummy, nummy." Of course, those silly words are part of the vocabulary as well. She does the sign for milk and grabs her cup to drink. She shares her milk with me over the phone as well.
A few weeks ago was the ultimate Facetime visit. I was in the kitchen fixing dinner so I set the phone on the counter so she could watch. Somehow the phone was set up so I could see her and she wasn't carrying it. We started playing Ring around the Rosie. I was spinning around the kitchen and each time I would finish the song, she would do the sign for more and I would have to sing it again. I finally had to tell her Gigi was too dizzy to sing it again. So she grabbed the phone and took me over to her stuffed ducky. She decided the ducky wanted a nap (injecting the sign for sleep) and took the duck into her room to put it in the pack and play. She told Mommy she wanted in the pack and play as well. So, in she went to join ducky and in I went to join them both! So we jibbered and jabbered and sang songs. We played with her talking dog, Violet, and worked on repeating all the words she knows how to say. Ella, ducky and I played in the pack and play for probably 20 minutes! All the while, my daughter is getting a lot of things done out in the kitchen!
When it's time to say goodbye, Ella and I wave to each other. I tell her to blow me a kiss and I blow her one. Blowing kisses is never quite good enough though, so she grabs the phone and plants a big one on it for Gigi!! Hysterical.
While Facetime visits don't beat real visits, they sure fill in what seems like the huge spaces between visits in such a positive way. It's so much better than in the old days when you tried to keep the long distance relationship alive with photographs and an occasional telephone call. Thank you modern technology!
