A Tech Glossary For Moms
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Can your children scroll and swipe? Both my children have tried to swipe my laptop screen, which makes me laugh. I'm not sure what they'd do with an actual mouse!
We all know Steve Jobs was a visionary, but I often wonder if he saw how families would integrate smartphones and tablets and streaming TV into their lives. As parents, we often lament the sometimes intrusion of screens into our children's lives (not to mention the very idea of a $600 toy for babies or preschoolers), but I don't know anyone who would want to give up the ease of communicating with people via texting, chatting, and FaceTime for their old landline.
Instead of lamenting the good old days of television and phone trees (or however one learned of school schedule changes), I regularly think that modern technology is such a huge boon to mothers, if not a total lifesaver. Here are just a few ways the tech life enables a bit of flow in our strangely long workdays.
- The Internet: Where moms can work from home and get household shopping done without children in tow. Where moms can buy diapers from work. The downside: where new moms learn about little-known kid ailments their child might be dying of at 3 a.m.
- Texting: How you regularly inform people that you — meaning the children you take places — are running 10 minutes late.
- Amazon: That place that sells kid equipment you didn't think you needed. Potty stool? Check. Pacifier pet? Check. Car seat protectors? Check.
- Zappos: Where you go when you lose a kid's shoe and need something, anything that fits, in Wide by tomorrow. Where you go when you need any shoe by tomorrow. Where you go when you realize you haven't been to a shoe store in years!
- Smartphone: This is the thing that plays "Elmo's Song." It plays music all the time, in the car and for kid dance parties. It may also be a place for your toddler to work — aka take a million selfies — while you get a few things done on your iPad.
- iPad: This is like a bigger iPhone for toddler fingers. It plays Sesame Street music videos. Also, it's where your kid can work should you ever happen to need to make a phone call on your smartphone (defined above).
- A Fitbit: This tells you how much you ran today, after your kid. Laundry equals steps.
- Blogosphere: Hilarious, infuriating, repetitive stories about how other moms up your game. Remember when you didn't even realize this game existed? Ah, the good old days!
- Facebook: Where you see pictures of all the people you know having babies . . . and more babies. Some of those babies who you have never met are now 5, and you feel like you know them.
- Instagram: Like Facebook, but the babies are in lovely colored shadows, and everything looks picture perfect.
- Twitter: The place to pretend you don't have children?
- Snapchat: Something the babysitter uses.