Video Chatting with Grandchildren

We love the opportunity to video chat with our children and grandchildren. It is one of the great pleasures of life especially when they are all living out of town in a time of a pandemic. We chat with both families several times each week and it gives us great joy to see the grandkids growing up before our eyes. We can see the differences with the youngest ones from week to week. It is such fun to see them experiencing life doing things together or on their own and then tell us all about it.

There is also no illusion to the challenges of raising children and we see the struggles too as the children learn to interact with each other. If we can't be there with them then this is the next best thing.

I often think about our family living here in Buffalo and how we were so far away from my family and particularly my mother living in Philadelphia. It's no different in time and distance than it is now with Katie and the kids in Philly but back then we didn't have that video chatting opportunity. We tried to call my mom regularly to update her on the kids and we had them talk to her a little bit each time as they got older but there was no group talk and certainly no video. It was just one person at a time and my mom love hearing from Katie and Sean.

To see my family we had to make that all day drive to Philly which we did regularly  at least twice a year. We usually went for Spring Break and then in October around Columbus Day. We always had to work around the kid's schedule and our own academic calendars but we made it work.

Recently we have been video chatting during Andrew's bath time and his getting ready for bed. It's fun to hang out during that special time of the day. Sometimes we get to video chat with them in the morning when he is particularly active and happy but that is only on weekends since he is in daycare during the week. Sean and Ashley are very good about sending us daily pictures of him and sometimes videos taken by the daycare staff. They are so much fun to watch.

Katie usually does their video chats in the late afternoon or in the early evening. It is always fun and now with Violet in the picture we can excitedly watch her discover the world and interact with her brother and sister.

We always use my phone for video chatting and use the Duo app. I'm thinking maybe I should switch to using my laptop and maybe throw the picture up on our TV. I should play around with some options.