What?! I am a mom now-2

Staying in touch with the family:
Both my husband's and my family family live far away. We can easily stay in touch by phone... but
things change when you get a baby. The grand-parents want to enjoy their grand-child, watch
her grow up. But how can you do this without spending a fortune?

We started with buying a cheap digital camera, and sending pictures and short videos by email.
But it was time consuming, and often the files were too big. One day a friend recommended the
website www.dropshots.com. You can sign up for free, or buy one of the upgrades. It is a safe way
to display your life on the world wide web (password protected). Your family can log on anytime,
and enjoy the pictures and videos at their convenience. www.dropshots.com offers a lifetime
membership for only $99.00. It might seem a lot of money at first, but it worth every single
penny.

We also invested in a Logitech webcam with built-in mic. Now we can make free international
phonecalls with Skype. I do have to admit that we have not used the video webcam a lot. Our
daughter can not yet sit still long enough in front of the monitor.

Staying in touch with "papa" (Dutch for "daddy"):

for our daugther. We had videos made of him reading a book, playing a song
on the harmonic, making funny faces, etc. Now and then I would play those
video messages on the computer. Our daughter loved it!
when our daughter was 1.5 year, we ordered a daddy doll. While my
husband was deployed, I would show the doll to our daughter, and we would
talk about papa.

We were always concerned about the effects of deployment on our baby daughter. How would she
respond when papa came back, and most of all, how would she respond when he left again? Each
time before my husband left for another tour of duty, he would make several video messages