Facetime

For my birthday, Jason totally surprised me with an iPhone--I had literally been counting down the days until the iPhone came to Verizon, but I knew that the technological/corporative contract/deal-striking challenges were nothing compared to his unshakeable distaste for Apple and his commitment phobia when it came to signing up for a data plan (the extent of interactiveness on our lovely once-cool, rapidly-aging flip phones is texting. oooo.). I was fully expecting to wait another year or so (or until my phone actually died) before we could have a serious talk about taking our cell phones to the next level.

I love my iPhone, but I confess that I spend a lot of time looking at it...and not really knowing what to do with it. Why, for example, when I say, "call Jason," does it call St. Alphonsus' hospital? And why, honestly, does my phone have the number for St. Al's in it? Where is Kim's number? When I went to call her on her birthday, I could not find it in my phone, and yet the next day when she texted to tell me that Cole and Mason each sang "Happy Birthday, Aunt Missy," to her, her name popped up as if my iPhone already knew her. These are mysteries to me. But still, love.

And yesterday my love hit a new level when I tried Facetime for the first time and got to meet this little face in (sort of) person. Let's just be honest here, third children get the shaft when it comes to baby pictures...and therefore long-distant aunts get the shaft when they don't get showered with pictures of their newest nephew the way they did when, say, his oldest brother was born (though kudos to Shaant on updating the blog lately, from where I stole this picture!). But Facetime, mmm. I got to watch him coo. I got to hear him grunt. I got to see him staring at his dad and licking his lips. It was awesome.

I also got to see Mason put on his sweet helmet for scooter riding and have Cole tell me that "he didn't have much planned" for the rest of the night. Highlight of the weekend. Even Jason was enjoying my iPhone.

The rest of the weekend was relatively uneventful. Assured that we would have jobs and paychecks come Monday morning (though it was a close call on Friday night!), we had this lovely Saturday planned with where we'd actually canceled plans so we could just hang out together--sleeping in, delicious breakfast, reading until we got bored, maybe even a bike ride...and then we woke up to the State Department calling, and Jason ended up having to work until 3 (some crisis in the Ivory Coast, blah, blah). I was ungraciously and childishly cranky, but happily the sun came out today and I gained some perspective and we got to plant our garden--yay! I planted radishes this year simply because they are ready to harvest in 20 days--20 days! I don't know who will eat them in 20 days, but they will be coming up!