Tuesday was off to a similar start when, part way through breakfast, something magical happened. My mom FaceTimed and what had been a battle of wills regarding how much maple syrup was required to make oatmeal edible, became a fun chance to show just how much we could eat. Video-conference sessions filled with books being read, puppet shows, concerts and fun experiments suddenly became a go to distraction that bought us priceless pockets of time.

I told a few of my colleagues about the fun my son had been having with his grandparents (one of whom goes by Nanai). We joked about how we could offer it as a service and call it MyNanai. The next day a few people followed up and suggested we actually try to create something to help meet the demand of all of our children and their classmates around the country who were similarly housebound. 

This is our effort to give everyone access to their own Nanai and a few brief breaks to handle outstanding tasks and to take a breather to restore energy and sanity – and also to connect our kids with real people on the other end of the screen. We’re throwing this together on the fly, so if you have ideas for things that would make it even better or if you’d like to get involved, we’d love to hear from you!

At the end of the day, we’re all in this together and this is just one small way that we thought we might be able to do our part to help our friends, our family, our colleagues and our customers. Stay safe…and stay sane.