Sunday, August 16, 2009

Grandparenting in the digital age

We live about five or six hours from my hometown, where my parents still live, and as such it's really difficult for us to make the trip up there in a weekend when you consider that Ryan doesn't get home from work until 11:30pm on a good night, and I have to be at work at 9am. So we've been chatting with my mom from time to time via Google Talk. Really, we're chatting from within Gmail, which has a simple, straightforward video chat function built right in.

It's funny to think that even five years ago, this functionality was available but would have been difficult and expensive for us to set up. And ten years ago, we probably wouldn't have been able to get our hands on what we needed to do it, let alone have enough bandwidth to see one another. It's nice that my folks can see Luke via webcam, even if we aren't close enough for frequent visits.

My mom went up to Oklahoma City this weekend to visit some of her family, and we were able to show off Luke over many miles just by clicking a button. It's no substitute for hands-on grandparenting, of course, but it's a nice way to use the technology we have now.

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