Guest Blog: Out of Sick Days, Working Mom Tip: Reading to Kids on Facetime

Hi everyone! Next month, Baby Basics will be doing a series of classes in the Valley on early literacy and reading with your kids as a family called Families That Read Succeed.
So when I read this post by my friend and  Out Of Sick Days blogger Emily....I just HAD to share!

Working Mom Tip: Reading to Kids on Facetime

Originally posted on 9/13/11

I’m in LA for production. We shot today at an airplane studio in Hollywood. Located at this studio was the cockpit used in the movie Airplane! One of my all time favorite movies! Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue! Timeless. And completely over-quoted by me.

So the first night I was here, I was talking to the family using the Facetime feature on the iPhone 4. It’s like a handheld Skype – so we can all see each other! But at the end of the call Avery started crying so I told her that after she and daddy put Nolan to bed that I would call back and read her a story. So we hung up and I panicked that I didn’t actually have a story. Should have thought of that first. I just wanted her to stop crying.

We hung up with plans to speak again in about 20 minutes and I immediately went online to find stories I could read her. I thought it would be much easier than it was. Everything I found was either subscription-based or videos where someone else was reading or they were just plain AWFUL stories. The one I found was about some fruit in a bowl that all talked to each other and went to do other things (like be juice or be a banana split) but really ended up as still life models and then ended up in a compost pile. The End. Really? At one point I said “Daddy, the person who wrote this was S-T-O-N-E-D.” But she didn’t care. She just wanted me to read to her. Tonight she even said “Mommy – read me the fruit story!” No. So I made one up about a princess with big eyes that cried like a kitty when she was born (her) and a King and Queen (AJ and me) and a prince that eats bugs (Nolan).

The important thing is that I came up with a gameplan for next time. Next time I am going to buy two of a few new books and bring one with me so I can read it to her and she can read along at home with dad. So I’ve never actually used this tip before, but I will do it next time. That counts, right? I’m totally never reading that fruit story again.

I head home tomorrow morning. Picking up the kids from daycare feels like Christmas morning every time I come back from a work trip. I can’t get there fast enough and we hug and giggle for several minutes. Then daddy will come home and we’ll talk about how “the whole family is here” and then we’ll count the girls (2) and the boys (2) and we’ll do this pretty much the whole night. It’s all very exciting. It’s the little things, ya know?

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