Have I mentioned recently that I had a baby? No? You missed that?

Newsflash: I just had a baby. And if there is one thing you really want to do when you have a newborn, it’s find fun, educational, enriching activities for your 5 and 3 year old to do.

No, wait. That’s the LAST thing you want to do. The first thing you want to do is take a nap. Then take another nap. Then sit on the couch and eat something before cuddling your baby and taking another nap.

Let’s just say that even with some of my family here to help the kids have been using the iPad a lot more than I usually allow. And I’m not the strictest when it comes to iPad use, so the level of technology-as-babysitter is close to 100%. But because I don’t want their brains to rot completely I’m making an effort to monitor WHAT they watch – fewer animated ponies and more educational stuff.

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We are having nap problems, part of which is totally my own fault – but that doesn’t make it suck any less. A few weeks ago when Caroline started fighting naps, I let her pick which bed she slept in. Sometimes it was her bed, sometimes it was Evan’s bed, sometimes it was the guest bed, and sometimes it was my bed. One day she was up in my bedroom and found the iPad under the pillow. Since she was born in a world that has never been without iPads (OMG flying cars are totally next) she unlocked it, found her app folder and watched Mickey Mouse until she fell asleep. I heard her over the monitor and thought it was funny – “Ha ha ha what a clever baby, how cute that she’s watching her show! And also that nap was so easy!”

You can probably see where this is going. I let her get away with using the iPad before naps as long as she was going to bed with no complaints. It was just so eeeeeeasy to say “Naptime, Caroline!” and have her run happily upstairs and jump into bed to lie down. She never made a peep and would fall asleep really fast. Since it happened RIGHT at the same time Evan stopped napping altogether I just…didn’t have the energy to fight it. Trust me, letting technology put my kid to sleep is LOW on the scale of “Thing I Feel Guilty About As A Mother.”

So anyways, this system worked fine – GREAT even – for a while. But for the last few days she’s been spending longer and longer messing around with the Disney Junior app and less and less time actually sleeping. She does eventually fall asleep – around 3:30 – but then I have to wake her up after an hour so she’ll go back to sleep at bedtime. I thought maybe she was just getting to an age where she didn’t need a nap anymore but AHAHAHHA NO ABSOLUTELY NOT. We tried it on Wednesday and she was a wreck by 6:30. Giving her a bath was like trying to wash a rabid cat and twice as noisy. It took her a full day to recover from missing just one nap. But on the other hand, if she’s basically just going to watch TV all afternoon I could at least keep her downstairs where I can interact with her (or, you know, we could do puzzles or she and Evan can run in circles and try to ride the dog. Again).

I suppose the first thing I should do is just STOP letting her have the iPad, but I’m dreading the screaming. There is already a LOT of angry child in this house and this is one the few things we DON’T fight about. But the current system isn’t exactly working either and I’d rather work on changing it now then a month from now when it would be even harder to stop. Any suggestions for my totally, completely, ridiculously first world problem?

Blerg. That’s really all I have to say about Friday. For some totally unknown and mysterious reason my blog stop working at some point Thursday night. Of course, by the time I noticed I was already out of the house and although my iPhone is an amazing little piece of technology is was NOT HELPFUL in determining which of the eighty jillion lines of code held the error. By the time I got home and started working with my host service 90% of my readers had already given up on my blog so my pageviews for Friday are hovering right around 13. That is no way to become rich and famous. Sorry internets!

I think things are all straightened out now, besides the one error my Aunt Katie keeps getting which warns her about some sort of virus. Which my host service assures me is NOT THERE and even if it WAS it’s GONE NOW. Plus I always remember to cover my mouth when I cough and am totally addicted to hand sanitized so don’t worry. You won’t get it.

In actual news that someone might find interesting, Baby Evan ate three pieces of pepperoni last night. Ate. Just like he ate a pretzel on Thursday and some puffs Friday morning. Either he’s just been screwing with me all along or he’s finally learned to swallow his food, since I’m pretty sure pepperoni doesn’t just dissolve in your mouth. I don’t want to suddenly push him into three meals a day but I am going to make an effort to provide actual baby-appropriate food on a more regular basis. I’ll just steer clear of his know enemies: oatmeal, avocado and toast.

Besides a sudden improvement in his diet, Baby Evan seems to have aged several months in the few days since his birthday. As if KNOWING my baby is 1 isn’t traumatic enough, my baby isn’t even very babyish anymore. He’s started listening and following directions, which is both adorable (when he helps me put away his toys) and VERY USEFUL (when we’re in a yarn shop and he’s thinking about pulling all the yarn off the shelves). He can understand the word and the sign for “gentle” and was niiiiiiice and geeeeeentle today when he reached down and pet a 4 month old at playgroup. I suppose next we need to work on the difference between a baby and a cat.

And just for the record, 28 years ago today my teeny tiny mother gave birth to a giant baby without a single drop of pain medication. She’s an amazing mom and an overall wonderful person. Happy Birth of Your First (and clearly best) Child Day Mom!

One of the things I like best about my iPhone (OH DIDN’T YOU KNOW? I GOT AN IPHONE. MAYBE I FORGOT TO MENTION IT.) is the camera/video recorder. I loving being able to take a photo and upload it to Twitter or Facebook without having to mess with the cord and the laptop and resizing. I think Mormor (Grandma in Swedish) also likes that feature, especially when it means she gets to see a picture of Baby Evan standing for the first time only two minutes after it happened. I’m gonna get his first steps on tape any day now, so expect some shaky, joyful scream filling footage sometime next week.

(Isn’t technology awesome? Think about how far we’ve come since we were kids, what with the film and the developing and postage stamps? I bet by the time Baby Evan has his own Baby Baby Evan he’ll just think “Hey Mom should see this” and whatever he’s looking at with be automatically transmitted directly into my brain. Um, actually that’s kind of creepy. Never mind. Let’s just stick with iPhones.)

ANYWAYS, one of the apps I have is Hipstamatic. I’ve had tons of fun with it this week. Here’s what it does:

Oooo Vintagey!

They baby chews the toy, I chew the baby.

Yo, sup yo? I'm chillaxin'.

Two wild and crazy guys!

Angelic

As if the sweatsuit wasn't already enough like 1970.

One more day, and I still haven't eaten the baby. Can I have a cookie?