Chatting With Ellie

One of the great pleasures of computer technologies for the past three years for us has been video conferencing through Skype. Our granddaughter, Ellie, lives 1000 miles away, and we’ve been lucky to visit her at least once a year there, and she’s visited us twice in three years. But we’ve also been able to visit her almost weekly via video conferencing.

For the first year, it was mostly just us watching her sit in her chair or on her mother’s lap, with her occasionally acknowledging some visual movement or color or sound, though mostly just bobbing around and squirming. But over the past couple of years, she’s acquired speech, she recognizes us by name, we sing with her (“Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “Twinkle Twinkle,” “ABC,” and the like (I’m looking forward soon to teaching her “Born To Run”)), and read along with her.

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Of course, it would be so much better to live just down the street or around the corner, as we did with our grandparents. But that not being an option when there isn’t a home not to go home to, these technological visits are a poor but welcomed and pleasurable substitute.

Top photo: 5 months, intrigued with grandpa waving with his bandaged hand (surgery).

Bottom photo: 38 months, in one of her princess dresses (Jasmine), reading with her mother, applying lip-balm.