Mamas Makin’ It Work – #16

makin’ it work long-distance… 


Annie
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Hi there! I’m Annie Blogging Mama Extraordinaire from Letters to Mo. I’m currently living the good life in an awesome little college town with the hubs, the babe and the critters. When I’m not listening to bad 90s hip-hop, making pins on Pinterest or saving the world one person at a time through my job as a medical social worker, I’m blogging over at Letters to Mo. My blog is written as a modern day baby book for my 9 month old son Cash (nope, his name is not actually Mo!). There’s a little bit of everything thrown in, but mostly it’s about our day to day adventures as a family.

My awesome family.

And sadly, part of our family is over a thousand miles away living in Salt Lake City, Utah. I haven’t lived at home since I was 18 and somehow managed to end up living in Kansas of all places (I’m pretty sure no one sets out to live in Kansas). And although we plan to move out of state next year, Utah won’t be our destination (I’m thinking someplace with more beach and less snow!). So Cash’s awesome grandparents are forced to love on him from a distance. As hard as it is to be away from our family, there are new traditions and ways that we have to make it easier.

1. Skype. Now I’m not the world’s biggest fan of new technologies. I *just* got an iPod and it’s barely out of the box, my cell phone is the crappy one that comes free with the plan and I have yet to figure out what an Angry Bird is. But Skype is ah-maz-ing! It took a while to convince my parents to join (they are old school and I’m convinced they thought Skype would not only be able to see their bank account info, but their souls as well). But once I got them going, they were hooked. Skype allowed my dad to see Cash for the first time since he was born. Skype allows my parents to see him crawling and hear his cute little baby babbles. We try to do a weekly Skype sesssion so they can check in on their favorite (only) grandchild.

2. Daily Grandma calls. Every morning at 8 I am in the car driving my little monkey man to daycare. This is our Grandma call time. I call my mom and through the Bluetooth in the car she is able to hear Cash gabbing in the background. We use this time to catch up on what we’re up to. If anyone listened in, it would be the most boring conversation ever, (it’s a lot of, “he ate 3 jars of baby food last night!” and “I swear he never stops pooping!”), but to Grandma, it’s riveting stuff.

My favorite picture of my mom and Cash.

 3. Pictures, pictures, pictures. So it used to be that I would post new pictures to Facebook (doesn’t everyone post too many pictures of their kid there?) but after hearing a few, “maybe you shouldn’t curse so much in your status updates, honey” I understood why my older sister doesn’t have them as Facebook friends and I dumped em. So now I email them pictures weekly that show what we were up to that week. Let me tell you, they live for these pictures! And 9 times out of 10 they are at Walgreens that day making prints.

4. Old fashioned letters, cards and a Grandma journal. I’m pretty old school, so I love getting things in the mail. Cash is 9 months old, so he loves chewing on the mail. My parents send Cash cards and letters that I save for him (they address it to Master Cash Trenton) which really makes me smile. And my mom keeps a handwritten journal for him that she writes in often. She tells him about what they are up to in Utah and stories from our family. I love that someday Cash will have this; letters from his Grandma in her own handwriting. I think it’s just such a beautiful concept.

If you’d like to read about our day to day life, see pictures of one really cute baby and want to read a Mama blogger that doesn’t talk about poop, come on over to Letters to Mo and hang out for a bit!