Die vier-en-tagtigste dag

Another momentous day.  Tim and Nicholas became naturalized citizens of the United States today, using Whatsapp to take the other four members of their family with them through the process.  Tim said there were over 700 people there and as a result it was much noisier and harder to organise, so the officers were not as friendly as those at my ceremony. The seats were also awfully narrow and hard, so that an adult man couldn't sit up straight in them without touching the person next to him.  This meant that they spent a couple of very uncomfortable hours hunched forward waiting for the event to begin.

So three down, one to go, and hopefully one day the other two and their people will be at one of these shindigs!

Whatsapp is my favourite app, an instant messaging app that has 400 million users per month. It uses a customized version of the open standard Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), costs $1.99, and then forever after you can text your daughters and sons and sisters in foreign lands for free!  Which is a massive saving!

It is the only way Emma and I could communicate when she was in hospital just before Luna was born when I was not allowed in.  Through Whatsapp I have seen bathtimes, the first delicious taste of real food as well as the subsequent meltdown, the weighing of the baby, and daily photographs of my little darlings, which of course do not make up for not actually being on the same continent, let alone in the same town, but which go a little way to assuage the sadness of long distances.  Sometimes we whatsapp about serious topics for ages, when it is not convenient to skype, like the middle of the night when everyone is sleeping. Texting is silent, enabling huge loud conversations to take place in total quiet, over this funny little pocket computer. 
 

Luna in the pink.

Ella in a pink hat.

These are my pictures of my granddaughters from Whatsapp today.  Luna is developing an independence which will test her parents' patience, no doubt, getting very cross when they help her hold the handlebars on the tricycle, for example.  And Ella is her own sweet little person, sitting proudly with her new straight back. 

Blood of my blood.