The iPhone Mom

Last fall I reviewed the app Baby Connect. If you’re away from your baby it allows you to work with your child’s caregiver to keep tabs on what’s going on. Using the app or the website www.baby-connect.com the caregiver can make quick updates when your baby is eating, sleeping, etc. You can check the app to see what the status is throughout the day and even send messages back and forth. It’s a slick app. Now Baby Connect for iPad has been released and the concept is the same but the user interface is updated and I think it’s an improved experience on the iPad. Instead of moving from screen to screen on the iPhone you’ll see everything in one screen on the iPad. Updating the information takes only a few taps and it’s all right there for you to see. The iPad app still syncs up with the website so you can view and update information there as well.

I thought the original Baby Connect app was a great one for peace of mind and I think that the new iPad version improves on an already great app.

Price when Reviewed: $4.99

See the app in the App Store

Seller: Seacloud Software

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

I Know My Mommy Loves Me is a sweet story told from a little bear’s perspective. It follows him throughout the day as he lists all the things his Mommy does for him that show she loves him. As a mom I really enjoyed this story because it points out that the little things we do for our children every day (making their lunches, carpool runs, picking out clothes) are absolutely ways we show we love them. My favorite part of the story is when the little bear is talking about how he and his Mommy love to have desserts. We love desserts in our house and my kids are certainly always more positive about being sent to bed after they’ve had a treat!

I Know My Mommy Loves Me comes with a bonus set of ABC flashcards. They’re easy to use – tap on a letter and you’ll get an object that starts with the letter. Swipe the screen to move on to the next letter. The graphics were cute and appealing. This is a nice app with a sweet message.

Brighter Minds is also behind the apps I Know Daddy Loves Me, I Know Grandma Loves Me and I Know Grandpa Loves Me. I have one promo code for each of these apps. Leave a comment letting me know which one you’d like to try. At the end of the day I’ll email out the codes. If more than one person requests a specific app then I’ll randomly pick a winner.

*I Know My Mommy Loves Me works on both the iPhone and iPad. I tested it out on my iPad.

Price when Reviewed: $1.99

Seller: Brighter Minds

When I had my first daughter almost eleven years ago (seems like yesterday) I had a genuine baby book where I recorded her growth and all of her firsts. When I had my second daughter three years later I used a calendar to jot things down. My son came next and I think I kept notes on scraps of paper but I can’t remember exactly. Somehow all of his important details made it into the scrapbook so I must have been somewhat on top of things. And now we come to baby number four and I’ve been keeping track of her on my computer’s notepad. If it’s a good month I’ll go in at the end of the month and write down what happened that month. If it’s a normal month then I’ll probably forget and have to go back and write down the dates to the best of my recollection. I figure at least I’m getting photos of her so she won’t be able to say we totally forgot about her! And for the record, that is anything but the case…truth is she’s been such a high maintenance baby (thank you protein intolerance and acid reflux and her incredible amount of spitting up) that her first birthday party will be also be my survivor party. You’d think that the mom who reviews iPhone apps would have wised up and used one to keep better track of Baby J’s growth but I haven’t. As I mentioned before it’s been all about survival this year.

Now with that out of the way let me introduce you to Gwiggle, a baby book meets iPhone app. It has five different sections and I’ll let you know about each.

Day 1 – Here you will enter in your baby’s name and all of their important birth details. Date and time of birth, weight and length, etc. At the bottom of this section there are three buttons. The “Doctor” button takes you to a screen where you can enter in up to five different doctors. Each doctor has their own screen where you can type in their phone number, email and address. You can also enter in appointment dates and descriptions. The next button is “Vaccinations” and it can be turned on or off. If you’ve turned it on then the button will also show up on the Doctor screen. There you can tap it and enter in the dates your baby received the different vaccinations. I liked that the vaccinations were already listed so you don’t have to remember all the abbreviations and spellings. The last button is “Baby Brother/Sister” and with this button you can add in siblings and then enter in their birth information, doctors and vaccinations.

Dr. Gwiggle – This section shows the doctor information that you entered in on the Day 1 screens. If you didn’t enter it in there then you can enter it in here. You can also deal with the vaccinations here too.

Photo – If you’d like to use Gwiggle to store photos of your baby you can. You have the option of choosing a frame before you take a photo. From what I saw you can’t bring in a photo from  your camera roll. The app’s description says you can take video with the app as well. My iPhone doesn’t do video so I wasn’t able to test that feature.

Bubbles – Bubbles is a section where you can type in notes about your baby as things happen. The app will time and date stamp your comment and then it appears on the screen in a bubble. It looks like a text message conversation once you have several comments entered.

Steps – This part of the app has five different sub sections and was my favorite section. First is “Tooth Fairy”. With this the screen is filled by a giant smiley face with a mouth full of teeth. The idea is to tap on a tooth and then enter the date your baby got a new tooth or lost one. Once you’ve entered the date a star will show up on the tooth. I love the concept of this screen but I wasn’t a big fan of the smiley face. It just didn’t fit with the feel of the rest of the app. Next comes “Growth Chart” and it’s exactly what it says it is, a way of tracking your baby’s growth. “Countdown Calendar” gave me a smile. Based on your baby’s birth date it will tell you how many years, months and days are left until they become a teenage, leave the nest and more. “Firsts” is a list of first events and you’ll want to tap on them to enter the date that the first happened. It makes it easy to keep track of such things. “My Family” let’s you put family member’s names onto the petals of a flower. The baby is the center of the flower and then you can tap on the other petals and type in the names of brothers, sisters, grandmas, grandpas, etc.

Gwiggle seemed like a pretty thorough baby book to me and a good way to keep on top of life with kids. Take a lesson from what I haven’t done myself and use an app to keep track of all the things that will be over before you know it.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: EdElder

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

I have four kids which means that this time of year I am running to and fro almost constantly. From the dance recital to the end of the year award ceremonies to the soccer parties to the orchestra recital to the school’s field day and then to my padded room. Our evenings have been filled with “Hurry up! Shoes on now, I mean now! Get in the car, let’s go! You forgot what???” May is the month that exposes all of the time management flaws we’ve managed to gloss over throughout the school year. One of the things I’ve with my kids since they were little is countdowns. When we’re switching gears and trying to get out the door I usually give them a ten minute warning and then a five minute warning, etc. Don’t tell my kids but it’s usually more than ten minutes, I pad the time to give us a better chance of getting out the door on time.

Last week I was sent an app that operates on the idea of using a countdown to help your children mange their time and smoothly transition from one activity to the next. TimeZup features four different characters – Mr. Count (think game show host), Operator (as in telephone), B.W. (Boy Wonder maybe?) and Pirate. Each character has a different voice and catch phrases. The first thing you’ll do with the app is select a character. The next thing you do is select a time to countdown from. The app goes as high as 10 minutes and 59 seconds. Once you’ve set your countdown time press the start button and the character will take care of counting down that time in their unique way. When the countdown reaches zero your phone will vibrate and a buzzer will sound.

TimeZup is a unique way to deal with the old problem of helping kids move from one thing to another on time. My only suggestion is to take the voice’s wacky levels up a notch.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: Chicago Software Ventures, Inc.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

I will admit that I’m a parent who’s been known to resort to trickery and stretching of the truth at times when dealing with my kids. Sometimes it’s a necessary evil. Well I found an app that’s for parents like me – Am I Done? This one made me smile because it’s an idea I’d never have thought of but an app that every parent could probably use at some time or another. Here’s how it works.  You tell your kids to clean their room and when they say they are done you use the app as a “detector” to check their work. The app’s main screen has icons that you push to indicate what you’re “detecting” for but they’re just for show and to fool your kids into thinking this is a serious app. Next you’ll see a screen that looks like a radar screen. There are two secret buttons that won’t show up, one at the bottom right and the other just above it. After you’ve made a big show of waving the iPhone around the bedroom you’ll tap one of the secret buttons. The button on the bottom right is the “Ok” button. When you tap this a penguin appears with a big sign that says “Cool!”. If you tap the other button a sad raccoon shows up with a “Try Again” sign and you can ask your child to clean a little bit more. No need to explain yourself other than to say the detector says the work isn’t done.

Am I Done? has icons representing hand washing, tooth brushing, showering, bathing, cleaning up and applying sunscreen. All things we ask our kids to do that they probably skimp on much of the time. But as I mentioned above, the icons could stand for anything you’d like them to. Just tap one, pull up the radar screen, scan away and let Am I Done? tell your child whether they’re finished or not. Instead of nagging and pleading and threatening you can let the app do the dirty work for you. Let that sad little raccoon motivate them to brush those teeth just a little bit longer.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: TourBuddy Systems

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

iEarnedThat is a motivational app for children and it’s not your typical star chart. This app has you take a picture of the reward your child is trying to earn and then turns that picture into a jigsaw puzzle. As your child works toward the reward they earn pieces of the puzzle. When the puzzle is complete, the picture is revealed and they’re done.

When you enter in the reward you can search for it at Best Buy (from within the app) or use your own photo. I’d prefer if the app let me search at Amazon.com because they usually have whatever I’m searching for. But that’s just me. iEarnedThat lets you track as many children as you’d like and each child can keep track of multiple awards. On the child’s summary screen you’ll see their rewards, what they must do to get it and how many puzzle pieces they have remaining.

iEarnedThat’s puzzle animation was a hit with my kids. The pieces don’t just appear, they come swooping in and the puzzle turns into 3D while the piece settles into place. I like the visual aspect of this app and the simplicity of keeping track of the goals. It would be nice to be able to increase the number of puzzle pieces if you wanted to make the goal last longer. Overall I was very pleased with the app, it’s unique and a fun way to track of my kid’s goals.

**Update – I’m thankful that app developers read my reviews and are able to point out things I miss in my reviews. I mentioned that I’d like to be able to increase the number of puzzle pieces for the goals. Turns out you can already do that and I just didn’t catch the feature. When you enter in a new reward there is a spot at the bottom of the screen that says “Pieces” with a number beside it. Tap the number and you can choose to create a puzzle made out of  2-60 pieces. Very nice!

Price when Reviewed: $2.99

Seller: Kidoc, LLC

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

I think potty training is one of those secrets of parenthood that you never understand until you’ve had to go through it. And then you have another child and have to relearn it all over again because what works with the first fails with the second. And so on and on. I was so excited to train my first child, could not wait. Found myself able to wait a little longer with my second and when it came time to train my third I kept putting it off. After that it became a year long process but that’s another story. I’m going to wait as long as possible to get rid of the diapers with my baby because it’s been three years and I still haven’t forgotten what it was like when I tried it with my son.

Now if I’d had the Potty Predictor app three years ago things might have gone more smoothly.  The app works as an aid in your potty training efforts. The first week that you use the app you track when you give your child a drink. Twenty-five minutes later the app sends you a push notification telling  you that it’s time to take them to the bathroom. If you’ve got success you mark the event in the app. You can also note when accidents happen, and what type of accident it was. By tracking these things you set up a regular pattern of when your child is using the bathroom. The app is preset to switch from tracking events to predicting them after you’ve entered in forty events. At that point Potty Predictor automatically sets alarms based on what you have been entering. The more diligent you’ve been in keeping track of successful trips to the bathroom the more accurate your alarms will be. The app will give you a push notification telling you it’s time to take your child to the bathroom. Hopefully, when you heed the alarm your child will have a successful trip!

Potty Predictor comes with a built in sticker book. The stickers show up when you log a successful potty experience. There’s also happy music and encouraging words to be heard. On your iPhone’s settings screen you can customize some things about the app. You can enter in your child’s name and nickname and tell the app if you want to you it to use them in the app. The app’s default setting is to send a push notification twenty-five minutes after you give your child a drink but in the settings you can extend that time interval. You can also give yourself more than one notification at a time and turn the sound and music on and off. Finally, if forty events isn’t long enough to establish a pattern you can postpone the “Predicting” phase until up to ninety events have been logged.

I really think that Potty Predictor could be a big help to me when it comes time to eventually potty train Baby J. Much of my problem in the past was consistency and remembering when it’s time to try a trip to the bathroom. This app can help me with both those issues. Now if only it could help with lack of memory and consistency in other areas of my life!

Price when Reviewed: $3.99

Seller: Simple But Needed, Inc.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

We have four children and we have gone through a baby monitor with each child. I’m not sure why they fail on us every time but it probably has something to do with our buying cheap baby monitors. Inevitably the cord gets a short and you never know when it’s working or not. There’ve been many times when I’ve walked by the monitor and discovered it’s not on, so I go to check on the baby (because I’m worried it’s not been on for awhile) and by opening the door I wake her up. Oops!

I’ve read about iPhone apps that turn your iPhone into a baby monitor but I’ve never tried one out until now. The app that I tested is BabyPhone Deluxe (Baby Monitor). It’s easy to use, you configure the microphone’s sensitivity, enter in the phone number of another phone, turn the phone to silent and leave the room. The microphone sensitivity lets the iPhone detect more or less noise. I like less noise because I want to make sure she’s really awake and not just moving around in bed. I would suggest testing the app out before you actually use it to make sure you get the noise sensitivity set to the right level. The phone number is important because the app will call that number when it registers noise. And I probably don’t even need to explain why turning your phone to silent is critical. You wouldn’t want a phone call coming through and waking the baby up! Another nice feature is the ability to set a time delay between when the app registers the sound and when it actually calls you. I’ve got a decent delay on mine because I want to make sure my baby is actually awake before I barge in that room. You can also set the app to reactivate itself after it’s triggered. When you answer the phone you can talk to your baby over the iPhone’s speaker. This would probably calm many babies down but mine would only get more upset and wonder where in the world I was. Plus I’ve got to keep that feature hidden from my older kids or my iPhone is going to become a very expensive walkie talkie.

BabyPhone Deluxe also has a recorder that will record the noises and “talking” your baby makes. You’re able to adjust it’s sensitivity to sound and you can email out the sound clips. The app has an event log that tracks and displays everything that has gone on. You can see when the monitor was triggered and when things were recorded.

This app is $2.99 and when I add up the total amount of money I’ve spent on baby monitors it seems like a steal to me! Plus, there are no cords to mess with and no worrying about the monitors range.  Now here’s the catch for me. We don’t have a home phone so during the day I’ve got no additional phone number for the app to call. Drat! But if you’ve got access to another phone during the day and you’re looking for an alternative to a traditional baby monitor then definitely give BabyPhone a try!

Price when Reviewed: $2.99

Seller: Bluefields BVBA

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

The ESRB Rating app comes straight from the ESRB – Entertainment Software Rating Board. This is the group that puts the ratings on video games and computer software. They are the ones who decide whether a game is rated E or M. And there is a big difference between those two ratings.

I found this FREE app to be quite wonderful. It’s very simple to use. Search for a game title and the app will pull it up for you. You’ll see the ESRB rating for the game, content descriptors (blood, cartoon violence, etc.) along with a nice description of what the game’s about. If you have any questions about what any of it means it’s all explained in the “About” screen. You can read about rating categories, content descriptors, rating summaries and that great disclaimer of online rating notice. In the search options you can select which gaming platforms you’d like to see in your search. For example, if you’re only looking for a Nintendo DS game then leave that selection on and turn all the others off. This is a nice way to filter out the various titles that can show up in your search.

The ESRB Rating app is a fantastic one for parents who want to keep an eye on what their kids are playing. If you’ve got any doubts about a game rating or contents this is a good resource and the fact that it’s on your iPhone means you’ve got access to the information anywhere.

*When I went to the support site for the ESRB mobile apps I noticed that you can sign up for a bimonthly newsletter. It features information about the most recently rated titles and best selling games. Sounds like another excellent resource to me.

Price when Reviewed: Free

Seller: ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board)

iUmmm is meant to be used as a tool for helping you improve your ability to communicate with others. It helps you keep track of how many times you say those distracting things like “like” or “ummm”. The idea is to keep track of how often they’re creeping into your speech and then work on saying them less. You can choose one of the app’s preset words or add in a new word of your own. In our house that would be the word “So”. It’s too much a part of our conversations so we need to work on not saying it so we don’t sound like we just want the conversation to go on and on so that no one else can talk. Phew.

Once you’ve set up the words that you’d like to work on you simply tap on the number shown beside the word. This keeps a score of how often the word has been spoken. You can track several different people and view reports on how everyone is doing. iUmmm also includes a timer that you can use to keep track of how long a speech or presentation has gone on. And on.

As a mom, I find that there are plenty of words my kids pick up at school that I’d rather they not say at all. iUmmm could be very useful at the dinner table if I wanted to keep track of what words they were using. We could set goals for ourselves and use the app to track our progress towards perfectly eloquent speech. Personally, I’d want to know when someone was tracking my speech so I think that for us, openess would be key. No secretly counting how many times Daddy voices his opinions with “uhhh” because he’s got an iPhone too and I don’t want him counting up all of my “ya knows”.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: Scott Singer

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.