I don’t know why we didn’t think of this sooner, but now that we’re about ready to move closer to our families, we’ve started video chatting. Seriously, you don’t need t.v. when you can watch the kids video chat with their grandparents.
Both of our Dads are magicians and jugglers. In fact, our kids think that every adult knows how to juggle. They will randomly hand 3 toy balls to friends at parties and demand, “Juggle!!” We’ve had to explain that just because their grandpas, daddy, mommy, and uncles can juggle, not ALL adults know how to. It’s a bit confusing for them.
Within a few minutes of their video chatting, Little Miss will ask my Dad to “do a magic trick, Grandpa! Do you have a trick ready for tonight?” I’ll never forget the first time he did a trick for them over the video. Little Miss’s eyes got as large as saucers as Grandpa took a scarf, stuffed it into his hand and then showed his empty hands, then pulled it out of his fist again. She was re-telling the story the next day to a friend, “And then he put the scarf in his hand AND IT WAS GONE!!!” and she flashed her empty hands just like my Dad had done. A couple days later, she asked The Narrator to do a trick for her, and he took her doll’s blanket and threw it over her head and told her it had disappeared. She turned around and saw the blanket behind her and was unimpressed. “That’s not MAGIC! You have to make it disappear like Grandpa did!”
One night a couple weeks ago, the kids entertained my parents with a puppet show. I have never seen a pig beat up a dog before, but it was rather entertaining! Like I said, who needs t.v.? It’s almost like virtual babysitting. I can turn the chat on and go read a book while they grab every piece of paper they have recently scribbled on to show off to the grandparents. The funniest though was when T-Rex tried to give Grandpa one of his drawings by “handing” it to him over the video. He kept smashing the paper up against the screen expecting Grandpa to take it from him! Ahh. Maybe someday!
Now we need to get some of the cousins hooked up with webcams. Now THAT I can’t wait to see. Four-year-olds chatting together. I need to remind my brother to get out in the garage and find his webcam!!
I know what kind of reaction you are going to get from your brother on your request. It was in the teens this morning and only suppose to get up in the 20’s all day! We have such fun and you are right it is most entertaining much more interesting than anything they can produce on tv. I love seeing the wonderment in Little Miss & T-rex’s eyes. Oh what joy we would have had if we had this kind of communication 30+ years ago when we were overseas.