Right…so….I’m dad. There are some things which Dad’s need to do. One of those is (typically) bring in the bacon. Now I’ve already covered that in my previous post, so it would make sense to move onto the next stuff.
Step 1) Helping out mum, cooking, cleaning, caring and such like (after all, Maria has been exhausted for the last month at least) which I have been doing religiously. In fact I think I’ve probably cleaned the kitchen more times in the last month than I did in the entirety of the preceding year. I’m getting pretty anal about bleaching the surfaces and keeping on top of things, because once you let them go it takes forever to catch back up. Which reminds me, the kitchen needs doing again
Step 2) Baby technology!
This is the fun stuff. DADDY STUFF.
So we’ve been looking at clever pram / baby seat / car seat combinations, baby monitors, and I’ve even secretly had a look at some lego kits and duplo stuff to price up providing the suitable brainfood for our little ones at each step of their development.
So what about my brainfood 🙂 ???
Well, I go away a lot, which is fine now – but in 7 months time, I will be going away unable to see my babies. This is simply not acceptable.
So I bought a FOSCAM IP camera with remote pointing, and IR nightvision.
Needless to say – Maria is not convinced.
BUT
Not only will this allow me to check on my babies from afar, even talk to them (at fairly poor quality), I will also be able to interact with mum during feeding, hands free for mum. I thought about using FaceTime but decided it was too much messing about for mum. With this IP camera, it is wireless so maria just needs to move it wherever the kids are, plonk it down and plug it in. Then she can get on with the important business of nourishing the nibblers, while I get on with the important business of pointing the camera, and pretending I’m still somewhere nearby, and we can also cover the daily catch up phone call in the same time period. If Mum so desires, she can still use facetime and that way she can see my face as well, but I think it will be too much bumbling about with a hungry baby in each arm.
What other functions will it offer?
Once the babies are big enough (6 to 9 months) they’ll move to the nursery and even in the pitch dark, the night vision function will allow us to keep a 640×480 eye on the little rugrats without leaving our bed. Or having to come upstairs, etc. It wont stop them from crying, or needing attention but it might just save one or two trips up the stairs a night, and more importantly offer peace of mind that both of us can check on the babies at any time, listen in etc.
It wont replace a baby monitor, the kind you carry out to the garden in summer – or take to the grandparents when you visit. It is intended only as a supplement to such devices; although, to be fair since it is iphone/ipad compatible, our mobile devices will offer identical functionality in our home.
So yeah – that’s the only toy I’ve bought so far.
I’ve taken it upon myself to be the one to explain which products we’ve bought, why, and whether they were any good in the end. So watch this space in a month or so for information on “travel systems”, and why the baby market is designed to make a shedload of money out of you.
TA TA For now,
Dad.
