I hope that wasn't a mistake...

[dreamshark]

It seems that Lena has a smartphone, albeit one with no phone service. One of her parents got a new phone and gave Lena the old one. I figured she was just using it the way she uses the ancient iPad we gave her, to play old toddler games. But it turns out you can do quite a lot with a phone over wifi. She has some kid version of Facebook Messenger installed, which I declined to use because Facebook YUCK. But I've used Whatsapp before and found it easy to use, so I reinstalled it. *sigh*   Facebook seems to have acquired Whatsapp since I last used it (of course they have) but at least I don't have to establish a FB account to use it, so ... FINE. Here's access to my address book, camera, and personal data, Facebook. Hold my grandchild hostage and I guess you can have whatever you want.

So we tried it last night and it was fun. We sent each other Emojis and short voice messages for an hour or so, while Amber sent me secret texts in the background urging me to send text so Lena would practice her reading. So I started making up little sentences in Emoji (Gramma Loves Lena) and including the message in words as well. Who knows, maybe she will look at the text, maybe she won't. Then we signed off so I could eat dinner and she could finish "something important I have to do."  

This morning there were 3 voice messages waiting for me, sent after I was in bed (they are two time zones earlier, but still a little late for a 5-year-old to be playing with her phone). I hope this doesn't get out of hand.