Technobaby

I believe it is no exaggeration to say that Gillian's has to be the most overdocumented generation in the history of the world. I can honestly say I have hundreds, maybe thousands, of video tapes Gillian since about a week after she came home from the NICU, and have photographs beginning the day she was born. It's obscene how many photos we have. Probably many thousands.

I think about my pitiful collection of photos growing up, and it doesn't even fill half of a 20 page photo album...most likely because I was a third child AND because it probably cost my parents as much as dinner would have to develop a roll of film... A roll of film that required you to buy every photo, whether or not they were under exposed, over exposed, a close up of your thumb, you name it. How simply uncivilized. What a waste! How many millions of pictures of unidentifiable media are piled in landfills across the world because we didn't have digital cameras?

At any rate, I can click click click away until the cows come home, or until my camera is full (which takes a really long time). I can take 300 pictures to try and capture the perfect minute, and delete 299. I can take 300 pictures, and it costs me $.19 to print the perfect one at a kiosk and no one ever has to see our pictures but us. I like that a lot. Luxurious privacy. 'Cause I use to work at a photo lab and lab people would look at pictures people ordered. Sometimes we would even make duplicates of ones we really liked (like trips to places we had never been). For real. I had this idea to make a book of photos and call it, "The Book of People I Have Never Met" and make up stories about every person in it. I would get the pictures from the reject pile at my photo lab. (alas, I never got ambitious enough to do it, but I could have done it in the time it took me to think about doing it).

Not only do We Parents of the Most Overdocumented Generation in the History of Humankind photograph and videotape our children ad nauseum, we then blog about it. I like to say this isn't all self-indulgence. I also think we live a lot farther from home, often settling in different states or parts of the country from our families than previous generations did. So, many of us blog to keep those family and friends in the loop that we don't get to visit every day.

In addition to all of that, some of us go that extra ridiculous mile and have video telephone calls on the internet a couple of times a week. Let me be clear: WE LOVE SKYPE. Skype is amazing. If you and someone at the other end of the phone have a webcam, then you can have face to face conversations over the internet. and it's free. Yes. FREE. We have found that the sound quality and the continuous stream are pretty excellent, and are thrilled with what we get for literally nothing. So, Gillian sees Nonni and Grandaddy twice a week on Skype. Nonni teaches her songs. She gives them hugs and kisses (she kisses the monitor. soooo cute!), she shows them her new shoes. They get to watch her play, and talk, and grow up, and when they come to visit or we go to visit, there is no awkwardness and she doesn't skip a beat with them. She acts like she saw them yesterday. And sometimes it was yesterday. On Skype!

Exhibit A:


Oh, and here is just a cute dancing video. Note how she changes the style of dance with the music, and how she clogs when she hears the banjo. That is no mistake, by the way. We dig the clogging!