Skype us, baby.

Hi Jared. Here's your obnoxiously obtuse hubsy blog shout out. Hope you likey.

The big man in our house...the daddiest daddy in all the land...best husband in the whole, wide world...provider of fabulous, creative, and much-needed/desired things...has recently presented me with the mother of all just-because presents. Wait for it...wait for it...and....it's a brand new laptop!! This thing is the Rolls Royce of home workstations (especially compared to what I was workstationing with before), and it came complete with internal webcam, microphone, and many other sweeeet features that I haven't even discovered yet!!

I mention the webcam and microphone, in particular, because it brings me to the subject of this blog post. See, one of Henry's best friends (his Paw Paw) left for a work assignment in Miami for six months starting last week. The separation has not been easy on either of them. On our end, this has led to setting up search parties for 'paaaaaaaawwww-pawwwww' as soon as we enter the front door of my parents' house, inconsolable weeping as we pull out of their driveway, and random running over to Paw Paw's bye-bye window at our house just to see if he's out there. All of this, as you can imagine, is sad to watch. We needed an interactive way for Henry to see his Paw Paw, stat, and this is where the title of this post comes in.

Prior to this week, we had heard of Skype, but we didn't have the webcam and other stuff necessary to start up. Now, thanks to the awesomely amazing Daddy Pants, we do. So, after trudging through the somewhat tedious set-up yesterday, we are now proud owners of a Skype account. It took us awhile to figure out what the heck we were doing, but we have also now figured out how to have a video conversation.

In our one practice session, we also learned a few things about Skyping with a 1-year old. First, when he's done with Skype, he's DONE. No amount of calling him back or trying to engage him is going to work. Also, when he's ready to get up, my tummy bears the brunt of his efforts to do so - which is obviously bad for business. Two, 1-year olds cannot keep conversations going. No, that's got to come from the other side...and it's got to be damn good to keep him into it. Hand puppets, songs, dances, and lots of easy questions highly recommended. Lastly, he totally doesn't 'get' that you can see him. He stares like a zombie at the screen...and he's completely engaged by it...but it probably doesn't look that way from the other end. Do not be dismayed. If and when he is no longer interested, he'll tell us.

So, there you have it. The man of our house is THE MAN, and we're up and running. Our contact name is elizabeth.chesser. Skype us, baby!!